United, we fell Divided, we stand
by SharpAsFlint
Summary: The foundations of balance and order within the Multiverse are crumbling. Her anchor back to earth is destroyed. Her teammates are scattered like ashes to the winds. As weeks drag on into months, her faith is dwindling. Can a certain series of events rekindle her prayer that there is still some hope left for the multiverse? Also on AO3
1. The day after tomorrow

Submersed in a teeming biosphere of foreign life, she was far from alone. Though her surroundings were swarming with diverse creatures - she had never felt so lonely. It stunned her just how different loneliness and being alone were from one another. The extraterrestrial jungle was an assault on her senses. Noise and heat ricocheted down from the canopy in all directions, condemning her to the screeching of a welcome sensory overload that almost drowned out the cries of the dense slab of grief and sorrow sitting in the pit of her stomach.

_Almost. _

The broiling, fragmented beams of sunlight filtered through the thick canopy above her in brief interludes, scorching the bare sections of her shoulders. The air was stifling and oppressively muggy. Her clothes and armour were plastered to her body by sweat and beads of perspiration went tumbling down her face with every sluggish step she managed to take through the dense mud. The gaudy, unnatural colours of the foliage and the appearance of more than one sun above the top layer of the canopy only served as a morose reminder of how far she was from home.

_Home was separated from her by billions of miles of void. _

With how quickly the team had been torn asunder, it had taken a few days before she was seized by the shock that she was living in reality. Then, she had been annihilated by the realisation that she was stranded, and entirely alone. Agura, who had been the team's anchor to reason. Agura, who always seemed so strong and collected in the face of defeat. Agura, who was now trying in vain to swallow the grief that threatened to destroy her.

_She didn't know if anyone else had survived. _

It had all happened so fast. A red tide of flames had besieged them, laying waste to everyone and everything in its path. Her mind had blocked out a lot of the awful events that had followed. The shock easily depleted her memory of the fall. She remembered Vert surging forwards, driven by vengeance - and almost by bloodlust. She remembered trying to reassure him that it wasn't his fault. Eventually, she was able to remember her own horror as what was nearly the entire Red Sentient army descended on the battle zone and Vert had given the order to run.

_There was nowhere to run._

After that, winning took the backseat to just staying alive. Survival instincts ran rampant over her compassion as it became every man for himself. Then, it became mindlessly moving from battle zone and planet to even deadlier battle zone and planet in order to stay alive and gather resources to barely scrape by and avoid her pursuers. The Red Sentients could still be pursuing her, but it didn't matter anymore.

_Quickly, the Tangler succumbed to its damage, leaving her even more stranded than before. _

No tangler meant no identity module, and no identity module meant no way to open the earth portal, because she didn't have the battle key either. Earth. What she wouldn't give to be back on earth, assuming that the Red Sentients hadn't uncovered it. Rolling grass-covered hills, natural crystal-blue skies and steadfast ground that didn't explode underfoot - she tried not to think about it. Yearning for home only made her sadness that bit more tangible.

_The merciless jungle made the arid, barren Arizona Salt Flats seem like Paradise. _

This planet seemed to be the latest stop on her multiversal carousel of anguish. It was plentiful with resources at least - food and water were abundant. What she really needed was parts. The amalgam vehicle of sentient and vandal technology she had built in haste on an unplanned visit to a blue sentient moon was barely holding itself together. She had stored it here in a cavern along with her small collections of bypass crystals and she and made a conscious effort to use that as a landmark. Her plan? Walk a radius in each direction from her starting point carefully, marking the trees as she went, praying to find a beacon of hope. Technology. A battle key. Maybe even a teammate. But the vehicle she had jerry-rigged together from vandal chariots and sentient artefacts couldn't make it through the dense brush.

_If only she had the Tangler _

But she _didn't_ have the Tangler. She had to miserably trek her journey on foot. The pain in her swollen ankles didn't drown out her sadness. And neither did her other aching joints that cried out each time she trudged a painful step through the dense muck. The buzzing of the flies didn't deafen the terrified cries of her teammates that echoed in her head. They swarmed and scampered over her sweat-slick skin, swarming no matter how many times she brushed them off. When she did cry to the heavens, to the midnight sky clustered with far-off galaxies - her suffering fell upon deaf ears.

_She wished Vert was here. Vert always knew what to do. _

But Vert _wasn't _here. There was _nobody _except her. The group of individuals she had been living with in battle force 5 weren't always so close to each other. Yet, after all the time spent struggling with irritating habits, pranks wars and quarrels over leadership, they had evolved into something more. Friends. Thinking about it now, they might have even been more than that. Family. _Maybe. _Despite how many quarrels they picked with each other, she still considered them some of her closest confidants. Now they were gone, and Agura felt as though there was no one to blame but herself. All of her friends cut down, one by one, by the red sentients. She'd never be able to admire Sage's courage again, appreciate Vert's cool-headed leadership, AJ's lightheartedness, Zoom's optimism - just to name a few. She even sorely missed Spinner's despicable pranks, and all the petty arguments she had shared with Stanford.

_She had been alone for so, so long_. _It had been months; Agura knew she wouldn't be surprised if a year had indeed passed since that day. _

By now, Agura's anguish and panic had subsided into a state of despondency. Her immediate terror was long gone, replaced by a burden of sorrow and misery that hung over her head like a dark, heavy cloud. When hunger pangs weren't gnawing at her body, when her sunburnt skin wasn't chilled to the bone by unrelenting rain - her mind wandered to the team. She had been alone for _so long _that she had become numb to the world around her. Survival was all that mattered, the only priority now. She moved and worked in silence so often now that the sound of her own voice was almost jarring. She'd clawed at her skin self-loathingly when she felt the tears burning her face in the aftermath of a sweet memory that transported her mind back to a time much simpler than this.

_She didn't know how much longer her body could keep going on autopilot. The isolation, the lack of socialisation, that was already eating away at her sanity. _

She wondered if the other survivors- if there were any - felt the same way. Were they depending on a rescue that was never going to arrive? Sometimes, Agura felt selfish for praying that everyone was still hanging on, because the position she was in wasn't living. It was _torture. _Like she had fallen into a purgatory, destined to endure mind-numbingoneliness and nights filled with fitful sleep. There was nothing rewarding about seeing the golden sun dawn on a new day - it meant one day longer that nobody had come for her. One day longer that her friends could be suffering in some far off land.

_One more time those familiar, friendly faces haunted her dreams. Paper-thin illusions that dissipated as she opened her eyes. Became intangible when she reached out to touch them. _

There was an incredible clap of thunder from above. Loud, violent and oppressive - not unlike Krytus' harrowing new regime. Though she hadn't been walking particularly far from the outcrop that was her starting destination, Agura felt entirely drained. Her limbs felt like deadweight. It was taking every ounce of willpower to trudge through the mud. Every few steps she would stumble and topple to the ground, the thick slop of the jungle floor splashing up against her ragged shocksuit and seeping into her scratched and abrasive knees and palms. They _bled. _The cool mud _burned _stronger than anything she had felt before.

_She was so weak. Entirely exhausted. Before now, Agura had thought her will to survive was near unbreakable. Now, she wondered what it would be like to lie down, close her eyes and never wake up. _

She berated herself for not stopping Vert from deciding to reunite the blue sentient minds with their shells. It was a risky plan. The reward was so high, but the repercussions of failure were even higher. They never should have brought sage into the multiverse. Now she was gone. The Reds had likely destroyed the blue shells. The heavens opened. Hard droplets of rain thundered down from the clouds, stinging, almost bruising her skin. Agura wrapped her arms around herself and shivered as the rain-soakedhrough her armour and remaining clothing. The heavy clouds sagging with rain were tinted pink by the sunset they obscured. She needed to find somewhere to rest for the night. She couldn't possibly keep trudging on through the dark. Not with the rain flooding the forest floor and several hungry creatures prowling through the undercanopy looking for her. The raindrops collected in pools on the canopy of the broadleaf trees, filtering down onto her body like a waterfall. She viciously rubbed the water out of her tired eyes.

_Water. Food. Shelter. Those were the three principles she lived by, in that order. Giving herself small survival goals was an unpleasant pastime used for distracting herself from long-term problems. _

She noticed the abnormal tree in the distance. Slightly larger and sturdier than the rest of the trees that swayed wildly in the ferocious winds. As she trudged closer, she noticed that the trunk was several metres wide. The wood was smooth to the touch, aside from the mosses and lichens that clung to its exterior. A large cluster of branches frayed outwards from the centre. It reminded her of a Baobab tree. If it was anything like its earth counterpart - there would be a stable platform in the centre once she neared the top. It seemed like the safest option. Only exceptionally good climbers could reach the top. That being said, how would she reach the top in her exhausted state? There were a few lianas hanging down from the branches. If they were stable enough, she could use them to hoist herself up.

_One day soon, her luck was going to run out. It was tough watching her own back in such a hostile place. She missed the principal of working in a team. Having someone to watch out for her, someone to reassure her ideas. She became unsure quickly without some form of structure or control. _

She brought out her knife from her makeshift belt. The light of the moon peeking out from between the clearing stone clouds shone brightly against the ivory blade. She had stolen the weapon from Vandalian supplies that had been abandoned on one of the blue sentient moons. She figured they wouldn't be using it anymore. The blade seemed to be carved from an enormous tooth, probably from some Vandalian species likely slaughtered by Kalus' horde. It was primitive, fastened to a palm wood hilt by vines and hardened sap. Judging by the extent of the nicks on the blade and claw marks on the handle, the weapon had been well-loved by its predecessor.

_They certainly wouldn't be needing it now. She wondered if the Red Sentients had wiped out the vandals. Or did they ignore them now that the vandals were virtually powerless? _

Agura drove the thick blade into the sweet-smelling bark, twisting it to pierce deeper. She twisted her raw, calloused palms around the ratty hilt as the soles of her boots scrabbled to find traction on the saturated moss at the base of the tree. Using only the strength in her arm to haul herself up, she used her free hand to reach for one of the low hanging lianas. Gripping it with both hands, she drew the knife away from the tree and balanced it between her feet as she slowly shuffled up the vine. She reached down to grab the blade, moving to hold it between her teeth.

_This would have been so much easier with the Tangler. She would be able to defend herself. Be able to go back to Earth for supplies, or call for help. _

She reminded herself _again _that she didn't have her vehicle. She was alone and probably nobody was coming to find her. Even if somebody was looking for her, there were thousands if not millions of battle zones and planets out there to search. What were the chances that someone would think to check here? She swallowed the lump in her throat. Thinking about that now wouldn't do her any good-

**Snap!**

She had reached out for the next vine, with most of her weight shifted to that side. As soon as she had gripped it, it snapped in two. Her body toppled forwards uncontrollably. She scrambled to grab something. Her fingernails scraped against the slimy bark, snapping and crumbling to skin level. Falling with a sharp cry, her body tumbled towards the ground. She screwed her eyes shut, not wanting to see the floor speeding towards her face. Not wanting to see the last moment when she crashed into the ground.

_But in the same way that all hopes of rescue evaded her, a swift death seemed to so as well. _

After a moment of pause, Agura judged it safe to open her eyes once more. She was dangling in place. Upside down. She could see the ground less than a meter beyond her nose. She looked up. In the fading light, she could just see her saviour. Her foot had gotten caught in a vine. Groaning, she curled herself upwards until she could crawl back upwards until she was level with where her knife was embedded into the tree. Tucking it back into her belt and using the solo vine to winch her way up the tree, she finally made it to the solid crest at the top.

_She couldn't keep going like this. _

She rolled into the small hollow between the branches with an exhausted sob. She had clawed her fingernails down to the nail bed and the raw skin oozed blood down onto her palms. Tiny slashes on her skin that _seeped _pain and soreness. She dug her tingling fingers into the loose material around her waist to try and stop the throbbing pain. Bone-weary tears of frustration leaked from her sullen eyes. There was a predatory howl from a creature off in the distance. She pulled her knees up to her chest and squeezed herself tightly, so cold despite the humidity of the surrounding air.

_Her heart was cold. Frozen. And there was nothing she could do to warm it. _

The rain had fizzled itself out, and she found herself on her back, looking at a clearing sky. One thing she always did love about nature? How untouched and raw it was. With the complete lack of light pollution from civilisation, the display of space above her was as bright and expansive as ever. Bold, bright stars shimmered overhead. Her eyes became lost in the dark aura. She wondered if Earth was still out there, somewhere. If she'd ever see it again. She wondered if a teammate, somehow, somewhere, was looking up at the same stars with the same overbearing sadness in their heart.

_And she was tired. So tired. Not just overworked, but tired of being alone. Tired of the daily struggle to fight to survive. _

She blinked. She could see the familiar faces flash across her eyelids as they briefly closed. As though her grief was strong enough to become a physical manifestation. She had been ripped away from her team, her friends, so fast that part of her mind behaved as though they were still there, with her. Voices echoed in her dreams, fading in and out. Too vague and fleeting to distinguish an owner, but they were joyous all the same. She couldn't put a price on all the good times and laughs she had shared with Battle Force 5. Though the jungle was incredibly loud, it felt eerily silent without her animated teammates. Even at night, the howling of the beasts, whooping of the birds and chittering of the insects didn't grow quiet. Birds flitted from branch to branch above her, the leaves rattling as they moved. She groaned, rolling over onto her side and curling up into a foetal position.

_The awful noise should have drowned out her cries, but it didn't. _

Insects whizzed past her ear as she dropped her head down onto the hard, wooden trunk. As the clouds briefly passed over the moon, it became too dark to see her bloodied hands in front of her. Her nails _burned _badly, and her knees trembled from enervation. She reached down and tugged her boots away from her saturated feet, cold and soaked to the bone. Brief noise from the base of the tree disturbed her. She could hear something large ambling around through the slop, judging by the hefty footfalls and deep, heavy snorting. She heard it wander deeper into the forest, probably following her scent. As she heard it wander away, she sighed and her eyes slipped closed.

_Sleep would come eventually through the noise and harsh weather. Though, Agura knew it would fitful and brief. It always was, once the subject drifted into her mind. _

_**Anyone?! Do you copy? Vert? Sherman? Come in! **_

_**Do you copy? **_

_Anyone? Please, respond! _

_Nothing but silence _


	2. Ashes, Ashes

_How could she call it a nightmare if it didn't leave her presence once she woke up?_

_The nightmares were the worst part. Tenacious and vindictive, they waited until she was asleep to begin their reign of terror over her subconscious. They were inevitable. Her spirit was too broken to reject the dark thoughts and her body was too exhausted to stay awake for long. There was no escape from the terrors that haunted her sleep. They took her sanity between their teeth and ripped it to shreds, like a rabbit in the crosshairs of a pack of wolves. _

_It was so cruel of them to just __**tempt **__her with the familiar faces of her friends and then, just as easily snatch them away. Each time she woke up alone in the dead of night with her friends' screams fading away into the chorus of the jungle. __The more she remembered about that fatal day, the more vivid and lifelike those nightmares became. _

_The images in wicked colour that flickered past her eyes were too awful to be put into words. The Saber engulfed in flames, careering out of control. The Reverb spun out and surrounded by Sentients, its owner screaming for help. Kyburi's clawed hand reaching towards her through the shattered glass of the Tangler's cab. _

Agura woke with a start, abruptly choking on her thoughts. She could feel the rapid thud-thud rhythm of her heart beginning to slow as normalcy slowly returned. The normalcy that included a humid forest and the flitting and scuttling of thousands of insects around her. She swatted the mechanical buzzing of membrane wings away from her ear. The feeling of tiny legs crawling across her arm made her shudder reflexively. Her eyes followed the small traces of light to the gap in the tangled sky of branches. Without the presence of light pollution, the night sky was a brilliant indigo – peppered with sparkling stars. Agura had since lost interest in the brilliance of the natural world. She had brushed by death so many times now that it was hardly worth it. Like faux stars, fireflies hummed overhead. Projecting azure blue lights – they unhurriedly passed through the leaves in a wavering swarm. She rolled over, feeling the insects bolt across her skin in response to the sudden movement. Her back cried out in protest from lying against the hardwood floor, but she ignored it. She couldn't have been asleep for long. Her sliced fingertips still stung with fresh cuts and the aching in her legs clung on with ferocity. The flies wandered across her forehead, congregating around her eyes. She fell back into a gentle doze. A gentle doze was all it took to fuel the nightmares.

Fire. Like an underling to the Red Sentients – where they went, flames were bound to follow. Scars littered her body, she had tasted the fiery violence of those wild flames first-hand. Sometimes, the dull scars across her cheek shuddered with heat, remnants of the explosion of pain from Kyburi's painful claws searing her skin. The wound on her forearm was infected, she knew. It was wrapped under cloth to ward off the burrowing flies, but it twitched and burned with disease. They had worsened significantly from this environment. There had to be other team members with more severe injuries. Agura wondered how they were coping. If they were still alive.

The event of seeing that arid, cold battle zone go up in flames was embossed into her brain. Portals – tears of red in the calm sky – had opened in clusters like bullet holes. Quick and precise. Red Sentients had filed from the portal like blood from a wound. Cascading. They could take Krytus' warriors but eight humans against an entire planet? It was easy to see how they had been surrounded and eradicated. Sometimes, Agura felt like a coward for following Vert's order to retreat. Going down fighting was better than a slow fate of illness and decay. Better than slowly being eaten alive by survivor's guilt.

The terror held her like a vice. Gripping her mind and refusing to let go. Krytus' laughter boomed in her subconscious, his humour fuelled by the terrified screams of her friends. Of Sage. Sage had brought them together and in the event of her death – they had become divided. A wall of flames loomed in the distance like an iridescent tsunami as she imagined Krytus' strong hands closing around her throat as she watched the inferno flicker in his smirk with her dying eyes. Her fingers brushed nothing but scorched air as those sharp fingers seared through to her windpipe.

She bolted awake for the second time. _Like clockwork. _Perspiration was plastered to her forehead and it took longer for her to conquer her quickened breathing. The air was abnormally heavy. She couldn't stop coughing. It was _so _hot. Though the jungle was naturally humid; Agura could feel a constant, wavering heat against her slick skin. A prickling heat, like she was sitting inches away from an open fire. As she woke up, the forest came alive around her. The usual, contented buzzing of the wildlife was pierced with alarm calls and the frantic scrambling of startled animals through the canopy. Wracking her brains, a strong odour hit her nose and she immediately understood. _Smoke. _The earthy, charred scent of smoke sent alarm bells ringing in her head.

She stumbled to her feet, discarding the sharp pains of protest from her swollen ankles. She pushed a handful of the branches away that were sheltering her and peered out into the night. The reason for her fear was slowly creeping along the horizon. Just above the deafening sound of the wildlife, she could hear its distant roaring. Where the sky met the emergent trees, the indigo sky was polluted by a poisonous orange. Tall, emergent flames were occasionally glimpsable through the tops of the trees as they spiralled upwards, greedily licking the sky. Her windpipe clamped up in terror. The forest was on fire. The pale flames illuminated the billowing clouds of smoke steadily rising upwards. The distant mountains breathed life into the inferno. The flames spanned the hillsides in clusters where there was any kindle left to burn. The smouldering patches formed a dense network of veins that pulsed and flickered as though the mountainsides were breathing.

She held her hand over her mouth, coughing. Her diaphragm ached with every heave her lungs took trying to expel the smoke from her system. Despite the distance, the heat was intense. The taste of ash and mud settled on her tongue. She wiped her watering eyes. Forcing herself to think logically was the only thing keeping the tide of emotions at bay. As long as she wore the silver sentient emblem that used to be emblazoned on her shocksuit; she was Battle Force Five's huntress. When her teammates lost their way in the wilderness, it was her responsibility to guide them back home. They needed her specialist skills to chase their goals and ambitions. They needed her levelheadedness and authority when quarrels over leadership broke out. She was there to lead the team in their leader's absence. Now, without the presence of her team to reassure her, Agura had become leader over her erratic emotions.

Swallowing the burning anxiety, she squinted towards the dancing flames on the horizon. Thoughts and ideas flitted through her mind like fast coils of electricity along a live wire. How could such a big wildfire start so suddenly in a tropical forest? She had been trudging through the pouring rain just hours earlier, not to mention that the wind was barely blowing gently. Still, she was glad that it wasn't blowing in her direction. The last thing she needed was the towering flames being fanned her way. On the other hand, this was no forest fire on earth. Anything capable of destruction on that scale could have been lurking in the deep recesses of the trees.

Though there was recent rain – the lightning would have only needed to strike something extremely flammable to start a fire. Unsettled clouds rumbled overhead; the clouds illuminated by sporadic flashes. If it didn't rain soon, she would need to move. She could shelter up on the rocks, along the barren outcrop that stored her vehicle. She had collected enough provisions there to keep her alive for weeks. Worst case scenario; she could move to a new battle zone – but she'd miss the ease of gathering resources that this zone gave her.

Agura's eyes continued to trace over the sky. Her face faltered as she noticed the huge bursts of embers erupting from the fire. At least what she thought were embers. Bright red, like flames that were slowly beginning to cool. They moved upwards – yet it didn't look like the wind was carrying them. The bold red lights moved upwards in a linear fashion, perfectly levitating.

_If there was one thing that Agura was certain about – it was that nature didn't create straight lines. _

Her eyes were glued to the murky sky, more fascinated than afraid. The beacons moved back and forth around the flames, hovering and swooping but never resting in the same place for too long. Like bees in a hive, she thought. Unless they _were _some kind of animals. She had studied the data logs – fire-resistant wildlife wasn't impossible. Some moved slowly across the smouldering slopes, drifting close to the ground as though they were scanning it for something. Others moved almost exclusively vertically, to the point where she lost sight of them in the dense shrouds of smoke. It was surprising that any animal could fly through scorching smoke that thick and still have the capacity to move even faster. One of the lights peeled off in her direction and she leaned up higher into the branches to try and catch a glimpse of it as it came hurtling in her direction. Her fingers - barely healed over – stung as they brushed over the hard bark.

Agura only realised what it was when it passed metres above her head. The revelation made her seize up in terror. The mechanical droning noise could just be heard over the roaring fire. The red light scanned the trees, unblinking and seeking only to hunt and destroy. They were Red Sentient Drones.

She scrambled down onto the floor, curling into a foetal position. She felt entirely vulnerable as she backed into the cover of the leaves. Agura felt adrenaline rush through her system, like someone, somewhere had opened a flood gate inside her body. All of her fears, anxieties and memories came pouring out in a vicious torrent. She fought the urge to vomit as fresh tears began to pour down her grime-covered cheeks. The panic quickly eroded all of her logical thoughts. She took in gulps of the burning air through her nose as she clamped her hand over her mouth, muffling the noise of her sobs. Her lungs burned. She sat huddled, violently trembling.

_**It wasn't fair. **_

It wasn't fair that she had come so far, only to be hunted down and destroyed like vermin. She didn't know how the drones had found her – if they were here for her. If they spotted her here, Red Sentients would follow. She'd be killed. As an ally of Sage, Krytus would have her cut down. She had to get out of this battle zone. That was her only chance of not getting caught. The drones certainly seemed like they were trying to flush something out of hiding. She tried to calm her frantically beating heart, as the palpitations refused to let her even attempt to focus. How had they found her? No corner of the multiverse seemed safe from tyranny now that Sage was gone. Agura tried to work the feeling back into her limbs that were still paralysed from shock. She needed to get up and move. She needed to get away from here. Checking that no drones were watching overhead; she inched her way to the other side of the tree. A sickening thought made her pause and resist the urge to retch. How many other teammates and allies had been weeded out by scouts and exterminated?

Peering over the edge, she realised just how high she had climbed to get to the top. Climbing down in the near pitch-black was a whole new challenge. She eyed one of the lianas hanging from a near branch. She could use a stable one to get down, but it would likely slice open the wounds on her palms. It was too far to jump without injuring herself. A few more drones whizzed overhead, and she curled back into the foliage. There were a few trees on the other side of the trunk, only slightly smaller. If she could jump into a lower tree, she could be able to make the jump down. She singled out one of the larger branches, hoping it could hold her weight. Leaning down, she gingerly tested it with her foot. When it didn't so much as wobble, she leapt, trying to land in a crouch as close to the start of the branch as possible. Roots lining the branches and trunk in a lattice shape prevented her from slipping on the rain-slick bark, but her presence must have startled at least half a dozen birds roosting in the branches. Scattering in all directions with terrified cries, Agura had to shield her face from being battered by beating wings and stray talons. She wrapped her arms around the branch and pressed her face into the bark, desperate to hang on and avoid drawing attention to herself. Hopefully, the drones hadn't been alerted by the sudden scattering of birds.

She clung to the branch for a few seconds, at least until she was sure that her world hadn't yet fallen apart. She wasn't too far from the ground now and the forest floor was clustered with shrubs – maybe she could drop down without any consequences. She moved to hang over the side of the branch, holding on with just arm strength to lessen the fall distance. Her legs brushed empty air. She dropped, her ankles absorbing most of the impact – though it reawakened the pain from days spent trekking the jungle. She sat in the brush for a second, catching her breath. She ran her hand down to her hip, momentarily reassured by the presence of her weapons neatly clasped to her belt. Her eyes darted through the trees, looking for one of the distinctive marks made by her knife. If she could find the breadcrumb trail she had left for herself – she could find the inlet where she left her vehicle.

Spotting one of the marks on a nearby tree, she started moving in a brisk jog. Her ankles burned, and the thick, suffocating slop of mud and ash clung to the bottoms of her boots. She followed the marks from tree to tree. Thankfully not one tree looked the same; Agura was able to make some progress. There was a monotone thud behind her, just audible over the sound of the roaring fire. She turned around to see her water satchel lying on the ground – one of the items she had stashed in the Tangler, paranoid of a doomsday scenario. What would she have done without her old habits?

Grumbling, she doubled back to get it, only for the ground to be rocked by an explosion ahead of her in the treeline. She dropped to the ground; her face pressed against the cold slurry of cinders. Even with the cold mud plastered to her face, she could feel the wave of heat from the explosion sweep over her. Even behind her eyelids, her vision was invaded with orange as scatterings of sparks landed around her – their glow fading as they sank into the saturated earth. A few landed on exposed skin, causing a brief sizzling sensation. The sky above her was awash with amber, with several of the branches around her burning and tearing down like slow-falling comets. The echo of the explosion transported her back to the battlefield. The cold, blue slopes tinted a scorched black by the furious blasts. She clamped her hands over her ears, trying to cancel out the horrifying din that came flooding back to her. The screeching of tires and the slow droning of engines dying out from fire. The mountains had been enveloped in a sea of red. They had left the cave and seen the crimson tide cascading down the slopes towards them.

Around her, she had witnessed each of her teammates fall into a state of primal terror. A type of fear impossible to fabricate. She had watched each team member fall into their own state of panic, some more obvious than others. The way that Sherman wracked his brains to desperately calculate the tools and time needed to solve an impossible problem and console Spinner at the same time. The way that Tezz's impassable frown somehow deepened as reality sank in. Both AJ and Zoom, trying to use light-heartedness to lessen the burden, struggled to see any kind of light at the end of the tunnel. Through the Reverb's tinted windscreen, she could just see the raw anxiety etched onto Stanford's abnormally ghostly face and she could hear the prominent wobble in Vert's voice as he tried to reassure his team.

She berated herself for doing the cowardly thing and jumping through the first portal in sight, leaving the bloodshed behind. As soon as that portal closed, she had felt regret for surviving the coup that some of her other teammates likely hadn't. Agura avoided thinking about death. Her own or anybody else's. She couldn't lose her will to survive. Accepting the reality that there were casualties only made her feel guiltier and guiltier for being the _one _who escaped. The _one _coward who left her friends behind and put her own survival first. She imagined their voices late at night, screaming for help from their own individual, desolate corners of the multiverse. Sometimes there was venom in their voices. Berating her for leaving them behind. Berating her for not stopping Vert from making _that _plan.

Picking herself up, Agura ran for her life. She pressed her hand tightly over her nose to block out the smoke, tasting the metallic tang of blood on her lips, courtesy of her bleeding fingers. She scrambled through the thick rain of ash, only just able to see the gouges in the trees ahead, signifying that she was going the right way. The incline was blocked by the tall emergent trees, so she was only able to see the top of it rearing over the leaves when she was just a few hundred metres away. She scrambled through the cave entrance, created by a huge overhanging chunk of rock. Only then, did she give herself the chance to collapse to her shaking knees and slowly regain her breath, sobbing. She felt safer, completely shrouded in the darkness of the cavern. She could see the unnerving red lights slowly scanning the treeline. Sections of the jungle were on fire, huge spires of forest going up in flames.

Even if she wasn't the desired target, there was something they were trying to flush out of hiding. She would attract their attention by opening a portal, but if she stayed here, she would be risking a worse fate. Barely able to see, she rummaged through the supplies she had stored in her vehicles. A bundle of different fruits, kernels and nuts – she hoped it would last her at least a month. A satchel of water. A few spare parts. A few more Vandalian weapons and tools. A cluster of zone-jump crystals. They had been a major find on her unplanned visit to a blue sentient moon. Capable of directing a portal to send her to another battle zone without a key, it had been a godsend for rogue Blue Sentients in their escape from the vandals. Holding one of the tiny azure crystals in her palm and clutching it tightly, she sent up a silent prayer.

The engine struggled and spluttered, groaning. Praying, she tried again.

_Maybe it wouldn't start. Maybe the water from the continuous storms had finally wormed its way into the engine. Maybe the corroded axels holding the frame together had finally paralysed themselves. _

She tried again, slamming her foot against the steel sides as the components rumbled in protest

_Please, I'm begging you! Come on!_

Her vehicle, an awful hodgepodge of sentient and vandal technology, made a loud gyrating sound, starting with a roar. The bulbs mounted on the front barely strong enough to illuminate the barren ground ahead. The familiar, pungent scent of gasoline seared her nostrils as it started forwards – nowhere near as secure or sure-footed as the tangler. The bulky tires bulldozed the rough terrain, splattering mud, earth and ash into a torrent that careered down the slope into the forest. Throwing the glowing crystal into the spot where the portal had last emerged, the stormshock erupted. Agura paused, taking one glance back to stare at the empty sky and wavering flames. She sighed. This portal could lead anywhere. To a zone teeming with wild animals and death traps, _or Red Sentient scouts. _She tried to swallow her fear as she felt the portal begin to lift the wheels off the ground, drawing her closer to the whirling vortex of energy.

_Looking back on that day, she liked to think that somehow, somewhere, a higher entity had heard her desperate plea. _


	3. Desertification

**Desertification - the process by which fertile land becomes desert, typically as a result of drought, deforestation, or inappropriate agriculture.**

* * *

Resounding silence followed the thunderclap signifying the portal's closing. Fine orange granules of dust disturbed by her arrival swirled around her vehicle, condensing into thick clouds. The deep howling of the wind was the only reassurance that the portal crossing hadn't made her go deaf. She shielded her eyes from the sand that pelted her skin and collected along her eyelashes. Eventually, the dust settled and Agura could take a good look around. It _could_ have been home, but she knew that was statistically near impossible. This battle zone, this planet; it was a polar opposite of its distant cousin that she had just travelled from. Miles of lush, green trees and blooming flowers were replaced with flat, barren ground. Sand ghosted over the dry, cracked soils, tinted red like the canyon sides that hemmed the valley in. Winding slopes created the boundaries between different sections of the arid plains. Gentle slopes littered with rocks and debris climbed to perches and platforms before climbing upwards to a steeper gradient that ended in spiralling jagged peaks that nearly kissed the sky, which was a dusty, faded pink that brightened into a soft orange glow as it neared the horizon. The sun couldn't have been setting; it was perched above her, sitting in the centre of the empty sky.

Beginning to pant, she wiped her brow free of the sweat that crawled over her dark skin. The cruel sun was beating down on her, with no clouds thick enough to conceal it and no shelter large enough to completely shade her. She slipped from her vehicle momentarily and sat in the shade of its baking metal frame. She shielded her face from the unblinking, ruthless white eye in the centre of the sky. She sat collecting her thoughts, calming herself by running her calloused fingers through the soft grains of sand. This zone seemed to be devoid of any resources. At least there were no drones. She tried to keep her thoughts optimistic. If she left any room for doubt, her worries would quickly run away with themselves.

_No drones yet, anyway. _

She had gone from an alien jungle to an alien desert and that warranted a whole group of different techniques for survival. She reached down for her belt, rooting around for her satchel and now wishing that she had stored more water while she'd had the chance. She took a brief sip – rationing would help keep her alive, especially if she didn't find any potable water soon. Staying hungry was a better idea too, though she had made a potentially life-saving decision by bringing water-based fruit with her. On the other hand, they were going to dry out if she stayed out in the heat for much longer. With her face exposed to direct sunlight, it would be too easy to collapse in this vast wasteland and fall upon death ears. She slowly pulled herself back into her vehicle, using as little strength as possible. She needed to conserve energy and she was already exhausted.

The sand crunched beneath the tyres as the vehicle rumbled slowly across the plains. She didn't want to run the risk of the engine overheating and so spent the slow trek surveying her surroundings. The further she travelled; more intricate canyons revealed themselves. They lay in jagged lines, forming the spine of the land. Sections of orange rock stood alone in huge monoliths. Layers of rocks crumbled away like skin, withered from the intense heat. Though reluctant at first, her path was starting to cling to the base of the rocks that just barely provided some shade from the sun. There were a few signs that the desert used to be inhabited. Littered amongst the rocks were the occasional beams of timber or metal. The debris wasn't recent. The wood was dry and flaking and the metal was red-rusted, almost invisible amongst the rocks. Very little shade, no vegetation and no water. It was easy to see why this old civilisation had fallen.

The hidden identity of the settlers piqued her curiosity. It couldn't have been Sentients or Sark - the materials were too primitive. She didn't think it was Vandals either. She was temporarily satisfied by the theory that it was a different group of settlers altogether uninvolved in the war – like when the team had discovered the Kharamanos. Maybe this race had been enslaved too, leaving their homeland abandoned and rotting. Despite the scorching heat, she shivered. Her team was now in the exact same position. At the mercy of the Sentients and worlds apart from home. It was extraordinary how naïve she used to be. They used to travel into the multiverse completely ignorant of danger. Sometimes they would have close calls, but each day had ended with them safely back home. Krytus was released; things became serious. They took more risks and deadly trials to ensure that the Red Sentients didn't get the upper hand. They grew further apart. They kept bigger secrets from each other. They argued about those secrets. They had ripped the team apart by not following Sage's orders.

Her vehicle polluted the soft noise of the wind whistling through the rocks. If there was anything living hanging around, she had definitely announced her presence to it by now. The air was contaminated by the filthy gasoline that it belched out through its dying motor. She cringed. She hoped that she would have better luck with this zone for spare parts. The blistering desert was the last place she wanted to be travelling. She had the last zone just about figured out. This one was still a complete mystery. How long were the days? How much more deadly were the nights? Were there any nights at all? She was so fortunate before for landing herself in a battle zone that had an abundance of resources for her to survive on. Her teammates may not have been so fortunate. She couldn't decide which was worse: being cut down there and then by the Sentients, or wandering aimlessly through some foreign land, slowly starving to death. She really didn't want to think about it. Admitting there were casualties meant that she was admitting that not everybody had escaped alive. She felt guilty, knowing that she kept going in a blind state of ignorance as others perished and were tortured in consequence for getting in the way of this brutal conquest.

Crawling along at a snail's pace for what seemed like hours and all of the ridges in the canyons were starting to blur together. The tops of the rocks rippled like water in a tormenting mirage that refused to dissipate regardless of how many times she blinked. The sun had only slightly edged in the direction of what she assumed was west when she noticed something strange. At first, she thought it was a cloud, revealing itself from behind one of the canyons and lazily drifting out into the open. The longer she watched, the more she noticed that it was a continuous plume emerging from the cliffs, being manipulated and spread thin by the wind.

_Smoke_

She was seized by panic. Like someone had taken the smouldering ember of worry permanently lodged in her stomach and doused it in gasoline. Her vehicle juddered to a nasty stop as her limbs seized up. Her hand flew to the knife on her belt. Then she couldn't move. Her jaw was clenched, her teeth digging into her cheek hard enough to draw blood. The strong fear had moved in months ago, curling up and making itself at home inside her chest, but the sudden appearance of the fine clouds awoke it from its short slumber. Agura was completely paralysed, too overwhelmed to comprehend what it could have meant. In her barely coherent mind, she knew she must have been staring, with her eyes fixated on the plumes for more than an hour. The sun had shifted its position in the sky, so that the ragged haze drifted across it, creating a dirty brown veil that draped itself over the bright white sphere.

The pillar of smoke hadn't changed its position. It continued across the otherwise empty sky in a trail, dissipating quickly. That started to douse the burning theory that drones were the cause of the fire. It wasn't the same as the fire she had witnessed in the forest. No continuous wall of dark smoke, illuminated by dancing flames that roared upwards. No hovering red lights in the sky. The immediate terror started to slip away, releasing the grip of its claws slightly. Enough for her to start forming coherent theories as to what was causing the pillars of smoke lazily floating across the sky. It could have been people. Not drones, not robots programmed only to seek and destroy – actual people. Maybe an entire civilisation. Hopefully, creatures intelligent enough to use combustion as a source of fuel would be capable of emotion and communication but maybe that was wistful thinking on her part. After all, on their planet – she was the alien. Her second theory that developed shortly after was that it was an S.O.S signal. This theory was littered with holes. This planet seemed abandoned, suggesting that nothing would have seen her portal crossing. Nothing close by at the very least. Moreover, why would they have wanted to reveal themselves to a potential hostile? Agura felt a brief flutter of hope in her chest. Could it have been a teammate?

No. Each member of the team had their own coloured flares to use as signals in an emergency, but Agura's desperation argued that whoever it was could have lost theirs. She had lost hers months ago. After minutes of fighting between her instincts and morality, she decided to proceed with caution. She really had nothing to lose at this point. Her inability to get over her fear could be wasting valuable time for her to get there and help them. She wasn't in the best position herself, but she had basic rations. Food, water, weapons and she had means of transportation. That was probably more than some of her other teammates had. _Or had perished with._ Something that could mean a difference between life and death. She stamped the gas pedal down with a different fire ignited inside her. Her eyes tracked the trail of smoke to its stem, her vehicle darting between the slim canyons as she tried to pinpoint the source of the smoke.

The source was located on one of the wider plateaus, on a platform around twelve metres up. It wasn't too far up the slope for her to climb, and it wasn't too steep, but it was coated in loose gravel and debris, clearly worn and unstable. She would have to climb up carefully by hand. Using her knife was not an option here as she tried reaching up to the largest, most stable boulder as her boots slipped across the small chunks of rubble. By the time she reached the top, her hands were caked in a light orange film of dust that had wormed its way into the developing scabs on her fingers. She shuffled over the ledge slowly, weary of the crumbling rock. Looking around, she realised quickly that the platform was unstable. She was both relieved and disappointed by what she found. The smoke was escaping from several faults and cracks in the surfaces of the rock, some plumes fizzling out before they reached a visible point.

The actual fire had to be somewhere beneath the ground, meaning that it was probably a natural cause. No Red Sentients or teammates in peril. She clenched her jaw in frustration. Her desperation to see a friendly face was eating into her ability to make logical decisions. She was the huntress. She had _set _traps less obvious than that. If she didn't find food or water soon, she would need to start setting traps to catch what little there could be living out there. She dug her blunt nails into her sweat-slick skin. She_ was_ the only one to escape that battle zone. She had escaped by the skin of her teeth. The fates of her friends were grislier than hers. She _knew _that. She painfully turned her head away from the broiling sun, trying to ignore the discomfort of her shocksuit sticking to her skin. It stared back down at her, almost mockingly.

The platform marked the entrance to a cavern. The unsteady boulders above were being held up by a rotting wooden arch that was dangerously listing to one side. Leaving the cave was a set of iron tracks, rusted and broken apart from subsidence. A disused mineshaft. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as she peered into the seemingly endless tunnel. Stalactites lined the corners of the cave and rusted chains hung from the ceiling, swinging gently in the breeze. A strong sulphuric smell hit her sinuses like a blow to the face as she backed away, watching the faint veil of smog ghost from the cavern's mouth like hot breath. The actual fires seemed to be burning deep underground and the poisonous gases were leeching their way to the surface. She covered her nose, wheezing slightly. The pungent stench made her eyes water.

Once she blinked away the boiling tears, she noticed that all of the surrounding monoliths and hillsides had similar platforms and caverns. All were leaking the same poisonous gas. The smouldering abandoned mines gave the place an eerie, apocalyptic atmosphere that made her skin crawl. Glancing beyond some of the lower hills, she noticed more signs of abandoned property. On a wide plain, divided by a shallow ridge, Agura noticed a sorry-looking cluster of buildings huddled in groups either side of the ridge. Both assemblies of buildings that shuddered from the desert heat were overshadowed by one of the largest ascents that was peppered with smoking holes. More mines. Tiny silos and barn-type sheds in the progress of sinking into the sand. The larger buildings at one time seemed to have served the collection of nearby mines. One or two of the larger decaying industrial buildings were attached to towering, unstable conveyor belts and pit heads that stood blocking out the sun. As dilapidated and unstable as the buildings looked, she was willing to take her chances sheltering there than in one of the gas-filled caverns.

After gently making her way back down, she moved off in the direction of the derelict buildings. They were mostly shielded from the outside. The only glimpse of life inside these walls was through the few crumbling rock arches that breached the barrier. Once she had passed under one, she felt her heart starting to fill with anticipation and dread. The colony was so well concealed but at least a half-mile wide; anyone or anything could hide within its decaying walls. It _looked _abandoned, but she knew looks could sometimes be deceptive. She tried to calm her screaming instincts by reassuring herself that she was armed. That she knew traps when she saw them. That she knew how to fight. She probably didn't have the strength to fight. Her heavy limbs were deadweight, like they were chained together by invisible manacles. The blisters on her burning feet burst one by one as her rotting boots sank deep into the sand.

She left her vehicle in the shade next to one of the barns. This one was barely a shell. The tiled roof was full of gaps and the jagged ends of the wood were in the progress of sinking into the ground that was probably already weakened from the mining. She circled the whole structure twice to make sure that it was empty. No tracks in the sand and nothing attempting to hide. Virtually hugging the walls, she avoided staying out in the open where she would be easily visible from the broken windows. Not that she would be able to see anyone watching her through the sand and dust-caked panes of glass. She basked in the cool shadow of the towering pit head as she ambled her way towards it. She wanted to expend as little energy as possible. The pillars of iron were coated in year-old rust, with their paint just crumbling away from her touch. Her eyes flickered over to the rickety boards covering the daunting well at the centre of the pillars. The wood was charred black, with thin wisps of smoke creeping up between the grains. She grimaced. The last thing she wanted to do was fall in.

Nothing else was boarded up. When she cautiously crept through the first floor of the factory building it was attached to, she was quickly under the impression that the workers had left in a hurry. It was like everyone had up and left in the middle of a working day. Workbench tables had been left cluttered with tools and papers that were now coated in a grey-brown layer of grime. Mould and rust were peeking up between each slat of the floor and Agura tested each one gingerly to make sure that the rotting floor wouldn't outright collapse under her weight. She cringed at the deafening crunch that erupted each time she stepped over tiles and fragments of glass. The factory floor was divided into assembly lines that housed different, obsolete machines. Pipes and beams stretched the length of the ceiling. In some places, they had collapsed, ripping out large sections of floor from above and revealing the bare bones of the structure. The wind whistled through the missing sections of windows and sunlight poured in through the missing stretches of the roof. She gently shuffled through some of the papers spilling out from the ancient cabinets, trying to make sense of the alien dialect of dates and instructions.

The metal stairs groaned under her weight as she ascended to the mostly obliterated second floor. The other end of the floor had collapsed down into the rooms below. She peered into a room on the left. The steel door was hanging by threadbare hinges and the dark floor was coated in more papers, tools and property. Pinned to a board on the far wall, there was a large collection of keys, each marked by different symbols and colours. Maybe she could try finding the locks that they matched. The rest of the floor was a control room. The buttons and dials were withered and caked in place by decay. She swiped her finger through the coating of grime on the panel, revealing the faded green paint underneath. The floor around her was blotched dark brown with dried oil that had presumably leaked from the machines. The old conveyer belts were weighed down by mineral spoils that had been dug up from below the surface. They stretched the distance of the room and then disappeared from sight as they retreated through a hatch in the wall.

Mounted on one of the walls under a part of the roof still intact; there was a huge pane of glass. It fascinated her to watch her own haggard figure creep through the halls from another perspective. She crept up to the glass and ran her arm across the dust and grime that had settled on its surface. Flecks of dirt still clung to the glass, but she could still see the distorted face staring back.

"_Is that really what I look like?" _

Tears sprung to her eyes. She couldn't take her eyes away from the gaunt, tired face. Agura almost didn't recognise the woman looking back at her. Her eyes were sunken back into her skull. Her skin was smeared with mud and ash and sweat. The ends of her hair were frayed, and sun bleached. Her eyes lacked any signs of life. They blinked painfully and sagged from many sleepless nights. Her shoulders slumped downwards at such a depressing angle – pressed down from the piling guilt that rested across them. Tears cut a burning path down her grime-covered cheeks and she was too weak to wipe them away. Her composure was crumbling. Stripping away like the paint peeling from the ancient walls. She clenched her fists tightly, her nails piercings the scabs on her palms. She felt blood running past her fingers. Sobs broke the terrible silence. Her grief was replaced with anger, red flooding her blurry vision. Her eyes found a chunk of rubble resting on the floor. Picking it up, she hurled it at the glass with intent. She watched with dark satisfaction as it shattered into millions of pieces. Grimacing, she turned on her heel and broke eye contact with the broken women in the remains of the glass.

The third floor was completely inaccessible. Natural decay had ripped the second set of stairs from the wall, and most of the roof dipped inwards at a daunting angle. Layers of insulation and cables hung down from the eroding skeleton of the building like groups of tendrils. After spending so long in a jungle, surrounded by rustling trees and chittering wildlife, the silence was a shocking change of atmosphere. Not that it made much difference. Despite how deafening the tropical forest was: it may as well have been silent. There had been nobody to talk to. Sometimes, she would talk to herself, but she had spent so much time alone by that point that the sound of her own voice was jarring.

She delicately retraced her steps back down. When she stepped back into the sunlight, she was almost relieved to inhale the stifling hot desert air. The air inside the factory had been clogged with dust and thoroughly saturated in a lifeless, stale scent. She was reassured by the fact that it had been unoccupied for a long time. She would come back later to root around in the machinery to try and find something worth salvaging. She was slightly unnerved by the fact that the place had been evacuated so suddenly. It didn't seem like the people had left solely because they had run out of resources to mine. She hoped it had something to do with the fires, or the desertification. Or else the cause could be much more sinister.

The sky had dulled to a dark orange, mimicking the rust that coated so much of the landmarks. She slowly made her way back to the barn she had left the vehicle by. To her relief – and surprise – it was untouched. She took another gentle sip of water. She climbed up to the second, rickety layer of the loft and curled into herself. Deserts were deadly during the day, with blazing hot temperatures and blinding dust storms. At night, they became deadlier. Without the heat, the creatures that stayed in the shadows by day came out to prowl. Being on an alien planet, Agura could only imagine the kind of creatures that dwelled in those caves. She rested her head against the floor as the wood creaked and moaned underneath her. She watched the sun disappear behind the canyons, bathing the barren dustbowl in red light. She wished she could have dreamt herself away from this place. She wished she could swim away from the white-noise static that flooded her brain. She wished she could just burn the tethers than bound her to this place. She rocked herself to sleep in silence for the first time in months.

* * *

**Here's chapter three as I slowly start to build up the word counts! I've decided to use the endnotes to summarise a bit of research/references in the chapter**

**\- There are a few bits of foreshadowing in here for events that are going to unfold in the next chapter**  
**\- The battle zone is based on the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania. When burning landfill waste, the mines under the town were accidentally lit on fire and have been burning since 1962 at least. The town was abandoned as a result and there is now barely anything left of it.**


	4. Survivor's guilt

**_Survivors guilt - Survivors guilt (also known as survivor's syndrome) is a mental condition that occurs when a person believes they have done something wrong by surviving a traumatic event when others did not, often feeling self-guilt._**

**_[Trigger warning - panic attacks, violence and description of wounds. Suggested or implied torture]_**

* * *

Agura knew she couldn't have slept for more than a few hours. She woke to a soft lilac sky, changing to white as it dipped down to the horizon. The rocks and sand outside were coated in a soft layer of dew from the clear night before. The cold must have woken her. After spending so long in a tropical forest with consistently warm temperatures, the cold night air was jarring. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. She could see her breath in front of her; ghosting through the crisp morning air. She forced her stiff joints to move; walking would keep her warm. There was still a lot she needed to do. She wasn't willing to give up on the hope of finding supplies in this settlement just yet. Having a keen eye could make all the difference.

The sun crept over the hills as she walked, bathing the buildings and hills in a pink light. The second industrial building looked more uniform than the rest of the crumbling structures. Grimy windows were lined up neatly in rows, encased in patterned brickwork. The iron doors at the front were hanging from their hinges, leaving a gap wide enough for her to slip through.

Agura was surprised by what she saw. She had expected to see a factory floor; not a hall.

Dusty tables and overturned chairs were lined up in rows down the middle of the room. Her eyes scanned the rest of the room, spotting a counter on the other side. Hope fluttered in her chest. She raced over to the cabinets and drawers under the counter. Some were locked, but a few were split open and a sea of tin cans had spilled out onto the floor. She picked one up. Sealed tight. She noticed a damaged can out of the corner of her eye. It was dented, with the top cut off. Upon touching it, she was hit by the putrid stench of the decomposing slop inside. She dropped it with a clutter; pausing to cough into her arm. Resisting the urge to gag, she looked it over once more. Odd. The lid had been cut away in a perfect circle, like whoever had opened it had used a tool to scour away at the serrated edges.

That wasn't what worried her. The worrying thing was that the decomposing food inside was liquefied. It should have dried out a long time ago. Agura was momentarily seized by panic as her brain frantically raced to find a rational explanation. The place had been abandoned. The tin had been opened a week ago at most. This was done by no animal either. No normal animal would have perforated a container in a perfectly symmetrical shape. Someone or something with intelligence that could rival her own had done this. Her eyes carefully scanned the counter, the tables and the open cabinets for any other recent signs of life. Nothing.

Slowly, Agura began to calm her frantically beating heart, but she didn't let her guard drop for even a moment as she gingerly climbed the staircase onto the next level. It was a long hallway, with arched doorways on either side. She had a sinking feeling that something would peek out from around one of the door frames. She peered into the first room on her left. Dormitory rooms. The room was devoid of any furniture apart from two metal-frame beds, the ancient mattresses on which were thoroughly saturated in grime and dust. The uniformity of the place was disturbing, because part of her had been expecting to see the dwelling of a squatter, or an animal. The wallpaper on the halls was peeling curling over like dead skin, creating a morbid display of decay. Agura took soft, cautious steps down the hall, cringing as some of the broken tiles crunched underneath her. Some of the rooms had been completely gutted down to bare brick and concrete, whereas other still had torn, mold-coated curtains hanging in the windows. She drew one of the sets of curtains back gently and rubbed away the layer of dust on the window with her palm. Nothing but sand, sky and rock for miles on end.

_**Bang! **_

Agura's heart lurched into her throat as an avalanche of noise erupted from downstairs. Paralysed by fear, she sunk down into one of the corners of the room before her shaking legs gave out on her. The chorus of crashing from below slowly died away, but Agura couldn't find the strength to move. For minutes, she sat rooted to the spot. She pressed herself further into the crumbling walls, hoping that the ground would just come and swallow her up. She tried to convince herself that it could have been the wind, an animal, or something collapsing from decay, but her instincts weren't convinced. Her hand slowly snaked down her hip to grab the knife on her belt. She relaxed a little as she wrapped her fingers around the cool metal and found the strength to stand up.

She slowly peered around the doorway. Empty. It sounded like it came from downstairs. She dropped to her knees and crawled to the edge of the steel staircase. She looked over the edge, half-expecting to see a figure standing at the bottom of the steps. She could see through the gaps in the railings that the canteen was empty; unless there was something hiding around the back of the cabinets. She moved down the stairs cautiously, with her eyes darting back and forth. The amount of stagnant tension in the room was suffocating and she was gripping the railing so tight that her knuckles were beginning to turn white. She checked behind every cabinet. She checked under every table. She checked inside every storage cupboard. Nothing. She had begun to relax a little, convinced that the noise was an animal or the building settling; when it came again.

_**Scratch, Scratch, Scratch **_

A loud, scratching-scraping sound, like someone rummaging about, followed by the occasional crashing sound as something hit the floor. She whipped around to look behind her, but the room was still empty. She could feel the vibrations of the noise under her feet. It was coming from below. She didn't know what was below this. She crouched down and lowered her ear to the floor. Loud scratching sounds, like metal being dragged over concrete, being followed by the soft, uneven thuds, like footsteps. She wondered if they could hear her walking around above. She followed the noises as they moved across the room, bringing her to another doorway when they stopped and faded away in the other direction.

Agura froze. Located in the middle of the room was a huge cellar door propped open with an old pipe.

Why hadn't she thought to look in here earlier?

Her heart started to beat wildly inside her chest with the newfound knowledge that something had been hiding down there the whole time. If it had heard her; it hadn't come upstairs. Worse still, there was no light. By the fifth step, the tunnel was plunged into darkness. Anything watching her would be completely hidden by the blackness. She moved down the staircase extremely slowly, making sure that her footsteps made no noise. She felt the walls as she walked, making sure that nothing was concealed at the side of her. Her heart leapt into her throat when the staircase opened out into a room in front of her.

She cringed when the material under her feet made a slight crunch.

There were tiny fragments of light, squeezing in through a gap in one of the floorboards. It wasn't much, but it allowed her to see the brief outline of what looked like shelves set up in rows across the room, creating a maze-like structure. Anything could have been hiding down behind one of the columns, so she made a point to check each with her one hand on her belt, ready to grab her knife. She had already peered down three rows of shelves when there was sharp clicking sound behind her. The sudden noise in the silent dark startled her, and she backed away down the nearest row of shelves.

She had known that she wasn't alone down there. Though, she hadn't expected to walk straight into them. She was gripped by terror as her back pressed up against the familiar frame of another body, sharing the space with her.

She heard them grunt in surprise as she shouted out in peril at the top of her lungs. She felt a hard breeze whoosh past her as something skimmed the top of her head and slammed into the shelf. A shower of papers, tins and spare parts rained down onto the floor around her. A hand grabbed her upper arm and without thinking; she wheeled around and slammed her fist into what she assumed was their face in a moment of primal fight or flight. They stumbled, and whatever they were holding dropped to the ground with a metallic clang. Disarmed and weary, she watched the figure clumsy climb over the fallen section of shelving and dart away around a corner. Intoxicated with adrenaline and panicked thrill; Agura moved to pursue them. Her mind wasn't registering reason at this point. All she suddenly cared about was catching and punishing the source of her fear.

She saw the shift in the grains of light as the outline of the figure rounded a corner at the other end of the aisle. They may have taken her by surprise, but they didn't seem very nimble on their feet. After a few more painful steps, Agura had caught up with them and grabbed the first thing that she could reach. Agura's fingers brushed filthy, shredded fabric and she reflexively clenched them, taking fistfuls of the greasy cloth and pulling with all her might. Over the noise of the scuffle, she heard its owner let out an audible grunt, followed by the sound of tearing fabric. She must have knocked them off balance, because seconds later there was a deafening crash as one of the shelves collapsed, spilling an array of items across the floor. She fought to wade through the pile of nuts, bolts and assorted metals that had spread out across the floor. She could hear them gasp as they staggered back up and started to limp away.

She gritted her teeth, reaching for the weapons on her belt. She wasn't about to come so far only to fall to an adversary that didn't have the courage or strength to face her head-on. She swung herself over the fallen shelving units, skidding over the loose debris on the ground. She managed to snag their bony arm in her grasp. Her boots went slipping over the clutter, the force pulling them both to the ground. Pain shot through her elbows as her weight crashed down onto her arms. She heard them hit the ground in front of her with a wheeze as the wind was knocked out of them. Her hands latched onto one of their legs as she desperately tugged them back towards her.

A sharp cry of pain escaped her lips as their other leg slammed into her head. Hard. A raw, tingling feeling spread across the centre of her face. She retaliated; lunging forward onto them with ferocity and trying to pin their arms together as they grappled with her. She frantically patted her belt, her fingers brushing over the rough texture of the Vandal nunchucks fastened to her hip. They would have to do. She held them above her head for a moment, hesitating. She didn't bludgeon them. She pressed the different ends of the weapon as close to the ground as she could, pressing the chain dividing the blocks down on their throat. She wasn't intending to choke them, not at first. However, she found her herself squeezing the weapon harder against their neck as they started to frantically struggle.

She suppressed shiver after shiver as calloused, bony fingers scrambled across her skin, frantically firing sharp scratches across her neck, her chest, her face. She pressed her palms closer to the ground, tightening the pressure of the chain dividing the weapons against their neck. Beads of perspiration cascaded down her cheeks. The figure pinned beneath her gurgled and spluttered in protest, flailing their limbs. Their knee surged upwards, violently thumping her stomach. Winded, she crumpled further over her enemy, coughing. Their shaking hands finally found her throat, pressing down on her windpipe with a grip much lighter than her own.

Did she really want to do this?

Did she really want to resort to killing this quickly?

Warm, coarse hands slick with burning heat trailed down from her throat and clung to her wrists. Their grip was weak and ever-slackening. They didn't have the strength to pull her shaking hands away from the chain pressing down against their throat. They sunk their long, grimy nails into the backs of her hands, agitating the thick scabs littering her skin. Her wounds burned in fresh agony. They gasped and spluttered beneath her as they slowly suffocated, kicking about with all the strength they could muster. Their feet crackled and scraped across the hard, gritty floor. They swung their knees up and slammed them into her back as she sat, kneeling on their chest. Her frustration and terror finally bubbled over. Her lungs broke into a hoarse scream as a cry of fear, frustration and hate all rolled into one obliterated the silence.

"Stop!"

She didn't know if she had scared them, stunned them or actually asphyxiated them - but they instantaneously froze. Her piercing shriek had shattered the sound of the struggle. She was swamped by white noise with the distant echo of her scream and the throbbing of her bones ringing in her ears. The deathly silence returned for a moment, as her trembling hands loosened their grip.

As soon as she did, loud violent breathing erupted from the figure she had pinned to the floor. She felt the vibrations of their trembling body as they were seized by fits of turbulent coughing. They kept wheezing, struggling for breath. Agura could feel their chest desperately trying to rise under her weight. They drew in a long, broken inhale, before choking out a much more desperate, drowned noise. Half sad laugh. Half mournful sob.

"Agura?"

And there it was. She scrambled back, like her hands had brushed white-hot steel. She felt vile. Disgust bubbled up in her throat and she was overcome by the burning sensation of vomit in her throat and nose. She roughly seized her nunchucks and violently hurled them across the room with a frustrated grunt. She heard them land on the other side of the room with a dull thump. She slowly brought her shaking hands to her mouth; viciously rubbing the anxiety into her cheeks. The familiar metallic tang of blood flooded her mouth as she anxiously ground her teeth into the groove of her lip. Dropping to the ground and putting her head in her hands, she allowed the tide of guilt and self-hatred to wash over and drown her.

What had she just done?

She could just make out the outline of his crumpled figure curled up on the ground a few meters away. The horrible noise of his breathing made her chest tighten up with worry. Her mind was racing with anticipation. Each pause in his spates of rapid, heavy breathing made her anxiety scream. For what seemed like an eternity; his abrasive, laboured gasping continued. Agura's gentle sobbing served as a backing-track to his panicked wheezes. Agura pressed her palms deeper into her face, wishing she could just shut out the universe altogether. She felt filth digging itself into her palms, which she continued to rub raw against her skin. The guilt inside her was reignited and started to burn. It started to ferociously burn deeper and deeper into her body and even deeper into the shredded remains of her mind.

Why was killing the first thing her mind had resorted to? When had she become so cold and selfish?

_It was when she had made the decision to abandon her team._

There was a brief break in the strangled gasping as Agura fought to hold in her heart-wrenching wails of despair as she heard the undertone of fear in his hoarse voice. Seeds of raw fear that her actions had helped to blossom. Sickening.

"Agura?"

There was no life to Stanford's voice. All the spirit and strength had been completely sucked out of her friend.

"I'm here," she breathed weakly. "I'm here, Stanford."

The words were barely above a whisper, but the distraught, betrayed tone of his response broke her heart. "You… you attacked me."

She crawled over to where she thought he was, as quickly as her frozen body would allow. She roughly threw her arms around him, squeezing him and gripping his tattered clothes like a lifeline. He felt unkempt and cold to the touch. Carelessly and almost selfishly, she pressed her face into his neck; wracked by unrestrained sobbing.

"I'm sorry."

Her pleading apologies were muffled by his clothes.

"Stanford, I'm so sorry. I swear, I didn't know. I didn't know. I'm sorry."

He had seized up; completely frozen in her tight hold. Sobbing harder, she clutched his body against her chest. She shivered as her hands brushed what she thought were his bones under the surprisingly thin layers of clothes and skin.

She felt Stanford's shaking hands slowly wrap around her waist and squeeze her back. His head dropped warily onto her shoulder as he buried his face into her collar and began to cry.

It was very rare for her to see tears from another teammate, but a breakdown on this scale? The burning wreck of a breakdown that Stanford descended into was on an entirely different level. It was jarring to see months of pressure and suffering come flooding out. As the only lonely soul to bear witness to his breakdown; Agura numbly clung to him as she felt his world come apart in her arms. The presence of a friend had reignited the excruciating feeling of loss. It had exhumed all of the happy, colourful memories that she had tried hard to lock away to salvage her sanity. Stanford's muffled wailing only mirrored her gut-wrenching sobs, releasing hundreds of hidden agonies that she had kept bottled up inside her. She could only assume that he had done the same.

She didn't know how long they sat in that embrace, with comfort flowing from one individual to another. Hard sobs softened into gentle crying until they were sitting in stunned silence. Agura wasn't sure how long that ear-splitting silence lasted. He was leaning over her stiffly, sitting quite still with his face pressed into her hair. She was still swimming through the ocean of muddled thoughts when he spoke and shattered the brief peace.

"How...how long has it been?"

She almost didn't recognise the fragile voice whispering into her ear. She couldn't match the solemn words and the grey, lifeless tone they were spoken in, to the Stanford Isaac Rhodes she remembered. The pompous man that she spent a lot of her time bickering with. The nuisance that she had come to appreciate as a loyal friend. The hint of arrogance that used to be so easily identifiable in his voice was missing, replaced by an undertone of deep pessimism. He seemed unusually lost for words and Agura couldn't help but notice how exhausted he sounded. How weak he seemed. Almost like the animated friend she used to know had been replaced by a sickly hollow shell.

She had to force herself to respond. How long had it actually been? Weeks? Months?

"Too long," she decided, squeezing his shoulder.

"Bloody hell," he croaked through his sniffling, sighing as though a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders. "I thought I was the only one." Agura heard his voice crackle as he descended into tears once again. "I thought I was the only one who survived!"

"I know, Stanford." The words seemed to be stuck on her tongue as she tugged her damaged friend even closer. "I know and I'm sorry."

She wasn't just apologising for their earlier physical altercation. She felt the need to apologise for leaving him alone. For abandoning him in his time of need in that battle zone, because he was obviously very shaken. She could get details out of him later. Right now, he was depending on her for comfort.

"You're not the only one anymore. I promise." This was a promise for them both, not just him. She had defied the odds and found one of her friends and then nearly destroyed them in a heartbeat. She pulled him even closer. She wasn't about to repeat that mistake.

When the world around them began to emerge from the haze of the emotions; Stanford was the first to pull away from their embrace. He slowly removed his shaking arms from around her middle and cleared his throat, distancing himself from her. The pair sat side by side.

"How did you find me?" There were still tremors of shock is his groggy voice. He jumped under her touch when she reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder.

Her voice was as dry as a desert. What would she tell him? Coincidence? Blind luck?

"I was being followed by Red Sentient drones. I passed through a stormshock to escape and ended up here."

"Oh." Agura felt a ping of sadness nip her heart. Stanford had obviously thought it had been more than chance. He had thought he was being rescued.

"Stanford, have you...been here all this time?" All this time, alone and in the dark - surviving from God knows what.

"No."

"Then what-."

"I don't want to talk about it." His cold, hard voice shot her question out of the sky in seconds. She swallowed dryly. Did he think she couldn't handle it, or was it just too traumatic to put into words? She hoped it was the former, just so that the guilt and misery didn't choke her further.

"We should get out of here." She grasped his cold hand tightly and tried to pull him off the floor.

"Agura…" he started tiredly.

"No, it's okay. I've got supplies in my vehicle. Food, water, _a few_ medical supplies," she wanted her offer to seem as helpful as possible. She wanted to reassure him that she wasn't powerless to help him.

"You still have the tangler?"

"Not exactly," she sighed. She looked back at the dark figure sitting on the floor. "Can you walk?"

"I can try," he sighed bitterly. She would carry him if it meant getting them out of this desolate basement and into the comforting light of the sun. He leaned on her heavily, but there wasn't much weight or strength behind him. It was haunting.

"You said you had food?" Agura thought she heard a glimmer of interest in his timid voice.

"Plenty," she reassured confidently.

His footfalls lagged a good distance behind her, and his heavy, laboured breathing started to get louder again. She looked back for him. "Please...just give me a second." She chewed her lip anxiously.

Walking out into the light and escaping from the darkness of that storm shelter had never felt so refreshing. The soft sand, although scorching, was a relief for the blisters on her skin. She pushed the old, rotting door to the warehouse open as far as it would go and almost fell down the steps. The light warmed her cheeks, sheltering her in a temporary bliss. It melted away when she noticed Stanford, sitting on the steps with his bowed head buried in his hands. He said he hadn't been there the whole time, but Agura suspected that he had spent enough time down there to gain a warped sense of comfort from the endless dark. She blamed herself. Maybe if she hadn't jumped to conclusions in the first place, their trust wouldn't have been ruined. She saw the anxiety radiating from him in waves. From the way he gripped his hair between his fingers. The way his foot frantically tapped against the floor.

"What is it?" She asked, backtracking towards him.

"I can't." His voice was muffled.

"You can," she pressed without a thought. For a selfish moment, she didn't care about his lack of enthusiasm. She would drag him with her if she had to; if she didn't have to be alone anymore.

"No, I can't."

"Come on, Stanford. It's not far." It probably wasn't the right thing to say to him in hindsight, but patience wasn't something she was willing to dish out at that time. She gently took one of his hands and tried to peel it away from his face.

"I said no!" He snapped, fearfully ripping his hand out of her grip. Frustrated, she opened her mouth to retort, but then closed it again as she forced herself to swallow her anger.

"Stanford, I just want to help you. Let me help. Please."

"There's nothing you can do," he muttered.

"There must be something I can do."

He pushed past her suddenly, with his face shielded and head tucked into his chest. Sympathy prickled in her chest as she noticed the limp in his gait. He stood a few feet away with his back to her, seemingly gazing off towards the wavering horizon. His figure was rigid, and his shaking hands were balled into fists at his sides.

"Stanford, talk to me," Agura tested the waters wearily. "What is it?"

He looked back at her over his right shoulder defeatedly. His sun-bleached red hair, mussed with dirt, hung over his tired face. Tanned skin from working under the sun was smeared with dirt and oil. A dull emerald green eye sunken back into his skull. Aside from his head, most of his body was shrouded in dark robes and rags that hung and wrapped in tatters right down to his wrists. When he pivoted his entire body around to face her and reveal the other side of his head, Agura couldn't stop her hand from flying to her mouth in shock.

It was a gruesome sight. She caught the glimmer of shame that reflected in his one functioning eye as his gaze darted to the floor. She steeled herself to pull her gaze away, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. Almost the entire left side of his face had been badly scorched. Blistered, uneven layers of skin carved a disfigured map of white, pink and angry inflamed red tissues onto his face. The jagged scar moved across his face like flames, snaking right up to his hairline and then back the other way down his neck, missing his ear. His left eye, or at least what remained of it, lay smack-bang in the middle of the wound. Agura's heart sank. It looked like it had never been stitched or treated.

What could have done this?

She scorned herself for falling to pieces in front of him. Again. It was all she could think about. How much he must have suffered, trying to keep himself alive with a severe burn eating away at him. Trying to bear the pain of an untreated, raw wound without dressing, without medication. Agura struggled to imagine that pain. His gaze was fixed to the floor when she walked up to him, head tilted solemnly towards the ground.

"What did they do to you?" she asked quietly. The one eye that wasn't sealed shut by thick crusts of scabbing rested on her for a moment.

"I..," the corner of his lip wobbled, his voice juddering with obvious distress. "I don't want to talk about it."

She couldn't blame him. He felt backed into a corner and was obviously terrified. She wasn't about to make him relive whatever memories he was keeping locked away when she wasn't nearly ready to deal with those demons herself.

"Was…" her voice was almost inaudible. "Was it the Reds?"

Stanford's gaze flashed. She knew the answer before he even had to open his mouth. "Yeah."

Anger began boiling deep inside of her. She hadn't seen fear that tangible in a long time. Her stomach started to churn just by imagining the things that the Reds could have done to evoke such severe terror in Stanford. Telling him that he was lucky wouldn't help. Lucky that he hadn't ended up completely blind, deaf or mute _or dead, _but she knew that wouldn't make him feel any better. The Reds didn't need a proper motive behind such a horrendous attack. Battle Force Five had stood in their way and now its team members were paying the price. Her chest ached with remorse. She had attacked him without a second thought, and she had then tried to force answers out of him. What was wrong with her?

"I'm sorry," she sniffled. "I'm sorry that I didn't get here sooner. That I didn't stop Vert from-."

"No," he sighed dejectedly. "Agura, don't you get it? Everyone else is gone. Sage is gone, the Reds are-."

"Don't say that!" she snapped suddenly, causing him to jump. "Sorry. It's just, we need to look at one problem at a time. Come on, the supplies aren't far away."

Stanford said nothing; choosing to walk silently in her shadow a few paces behind. She snuck glances at him over her shoulder; her worry building with each glance she took at his broken body. Each step seemed like effort as she watched his feet catch and drag against the sand as he lifted them to walk. She'd carry him if she needed to. No way in hell would she leave him behind. She was relieved to see the barn coming up in the distance. She just hoped she could rekindle the trust that she'd destroyed.

Stanford almost fell through the door behind her, catching himself at the last moment. She saw the deathly look on his face and winced. His leg – the one she had caught him limping on - was shaking and sticking outwards at a nasty angle now that he was barely standing upright. She forced him to sit, before he lost consciousness and fell. Her mind went straight into survival mode as she dug through the supplies stashed in her vehicle. She glanced back at him. Exhaustion. Heatstroke. Poor nourishment. Any of those things were potential killers without treatment. She felt a flutter of hope as her hand grabbed the top of one of the water satchels.

"You can do this Agura," she told herself.

She kept telling herself that even after she had sat down next to him and offered him a drink with shaking hands.

_You can __**fix**__ this._

* * *

**_Would you believe I wrote the middle of the chapter before I wrote the beginning? I don't think I've actually written something that heart-wrenching in a long time. Now we know that at least one other person survived the coup and will soon find out what actually happened on that fateful day. I'm hoping to get the next chapter done in around the same time frame, but I've got Uni applications and assessments coming up, so banging out 5k chapters may turn into a rarity. Nonetheless, I'd love to see some feedback and critique on this fic! Please drop me a comment with your opinions ^^_**


	5. The blind leading the blind

**The blind leading the blind - An idiom and metaphor used to describe a situation where a person who knows nothing is getting advice and help from another person who knows almost nothing.**

* * *

The sky was a strange, gaudy colour. That was the strongest memory she had of that vague, surreal evening. The sun had already disappeared behind the hills, and a thick blanket of ash-coloured clouds had rolled in from the south. Sitting stagnant in the sky, low hanging clouds caught the retreating beams of the sun, bathing in the orange light. A yellow halo of brightness separated the clouds from the visible sky. Agura lay sprawled out on her back in the sand, despondently running the dark grains of silt between her fingers. Warm to the touch; they still held the heat of the roaring afternoon.

She was in a daze. That hazy afternoon had passed in a blur of emotions. With her thirst quenched and hunger satiated, she should have felt refreshed; but that pit of guilt was still steadily growing inside her. Stanford sat in the sand next to her, with his knees tucked up to his chest and a bone-weary expression on his face. With some food, water and a short rest, Agura wanted to say that he looked better, looked like he didn't just claw his way out of hell; but the strangled essence of hope was caught on her tongue. Agura realised that he must have been exhausted. His gaze was fixated on the horizon, squinting through a trembling eye as he tried to focus. Why wouldn't he rest? Was he still nervous to let his guard down around her?

Obviously, he still wasn't willing to pull down that wall he had put in between them. Not that she could blame him. She had caused him to put it there. She suppressed a shiver. Playing the blame game wouldn't help anyone now. She had tried in vain to stomach her guilt. It was time to live with it. She had assured herself that if Stanford had managed to survive, surely the rest of the team had managed to as well.

_You're too optimistic, _her mind echoed, _he probably survived by the skin of his teeth. By blind luck. _

She rolled over onto her side, curling into herself. She knew they were both jumping to sweep their own demons under the rug. She could hardly criticise him, when she kept herself tight-lipped when mentioning her own issues that were evidently not as severe as his.

She sighed loudly. Stanford paused his stupor to glance down at her. His glassy eye was glazed over with an emotion that Agura couldn't identify. Numbness? Despondency? Fatigue?

All of the above. The dying daylight drew attention to the heavy bags under his eyes and extended the reaches of the shadows around his gaunt cheekbones. It was still jarring, seeing the cocky, talkative Brit, who was usually the first to voice his opinions; so quiet. Part of her was hoping, praying for him to start his usual habit of bickering with her; if only so she could get some normalcy for the first time in months. She wondered if he felt the same. If he was waiting for her to take the lead and start making orders. If he was waiting for her to start berating him, start blaming him because anything was better than the damning silence.

"Agura?" Stanford's voice was barely above a whisper and his voice lacked the arrogance that used to be so akin to his character.

"Yeah?" She answered softly, sitting up.

"How did you escape?"

"Escape?"

"Escape the Reds. You know, back in that," he paused with a deep sigh, "that battle zone."

Agura chewed her lip, thinking. She would need to choose her words carefully. He obviously hadn't gotten away and she didn't want to distress him by letting him know that she got away relatively unscathed.

"Blind luck?" She sighed. "Kyburi and her hunting party were chasing me." Her mind started to sprint as she relived the horrendous chase that had occurred between the tangler and the Venikus. "Kyburi had broken into the cab and I panicked, driving towards the first portal I saw open." She stopped as her voice began to break. "I know I should have waited. I should have done something. I shouldn't have left everyone alone." Her voice started to crack as hot tears welled up in her eyes. It became more difficult to speak. "I should have found a way to keep the portal open, I should have been watching Vert's back, I should have stopped him from making that decision, I-."

She pressed her hand to her mouth and let out a quiet sob. Stanford looked hurt. He looked like he wanted to say something, but he also looked so depleted that she wondered if he had any raw emotion left to shed. He settled for aggressively running a hand through his hair, frustrated.

She swallowed her sadness and continued, "Did you see anyone else make it out? Did the reds destroy the Reverb?"

She watched his bottom lip tremble as his gaze scanned the ground. She found herself wishing she shouldn't have asked.

"I-," he started and then continued at a whisper, "there's a bit more to it than that, luv-."

Oh, _oh. _

She cleared her throat. She looked at him and swallowed the burning curiosity. "Sorry," she cringed. How many times would she use 'sorry' as a scapegoat for her bottled-up problems?

"I mean it's just that-."

"-That sorry doesn't really mean anything anymore, right old girl?" Stanford was smiling, but he didn't look sincere. Or happy. The corner of his lip was twitching as he tried to hold his face from dropping into a dismal frown. It was unsettling for her to hear something that heavy come from someone that rarely let down his arrogant persona to show his vulnerabilities.

She sat up, resting her head in her hands. The dull scratches on the backs of her hands still burned from their earlier altercation. "What else can I say, Stanford? Even this morning…" she sighed, playing with the idea of ripping the bandage off quickly to save the pain. "I wasn't thinking straight. I was scared and I made a bad call. I know it's not an excuse but-."

It didn't seem like he held it against her. "Think nothing of it, Agura," he said quickly. "I-I've had worse happen to me."

Looking at his disfigured face, she didn't doubt that for a second. "I know that and I'm-," she paused, looking right at him and adopting a gentler tone, "If there's ever anything you want to tell me; I'm here. I don't know what you've been through, but I do know that we've lost the same war and we've lost the same friends. I'm not about to lose any more."

He held her gaze and Agura thought she saw an opening in his hard facade. He changed the subject quickly. She guessed he wasn't ready to pull that bandage off yet either.

She already knew he was searching for something else to move the conversation on to. He was looking at her vehicle parked in the back of the barn.

"Where did you find it?"

It was a welcome distraction. "Made it. Sort of." He cocked his head at her. "The battle zone I was marooned in first had a portal leading to one of the Blue Sentient moons. I managed to get through after timing the patterns of the aftershocks. The place was abandoned, probably because the Kharamanos took care of the vandals, but there was a lot left behind. A lot I could salvage and survive on."

"...And the Tangler?" She could see that he was testing the waters. She smiled half-heartedly. "It didn't last long with the amount of damage it had. Kyburi must have done something that fried the systems in her attack. Everything was overloaded." And without Sage to repair it…" she drifted off, gaze looking off into the distance. "It ended up being spare parts."

Stanford gestured to the Tangler's demoted successor "How far can you drive it?"

"It doesn't cut out _that_ much but it I've never really driven long enough to call it reliable. Why?"

He was fumbling with his hands for a moment and she was wondering what he was going to come out with. "I don't spend every waking day in that basement. Whatever lived here before built some kind of watchtower - built it into the cliff. It's remote but safe enough and protected from the dust storms."

That was something she hadn't considered. She had tolerated the biting cold last night due to exhaustion, but if Stanford knew somewhere better, somewhere warmer; she'd trust his judgement.

"How far away is it?"

"I- I don't know if I can find it in the dark," he said sheepishly.

"I'll drive us," she offered without a second thought. "Just try your best."

She watched Stanford slowly pull himself up off the ground. She felt a ping of guilt crawling up her spine as she noticed him gingerly testing his leg to the ground to regain balance. By the looks of it, he didn't have any means of transport, which meant he had been stumbling around in the heat to get around. Sand-blasted and sun-stricken, the toll of the desert was evident on him, from his skin, tanned by sunlight and grime to his dishevelled sun-bleached hair.

She heard watched him balancing himself onto the back behind her as she climbed into the driver's seat. She noticed him cringe for a second as he used the wheel arch as leverage to pull his other leg up from the ground with a cautious level of dexterity.

"You okay?"

"Fine"

"You sure?"

"Agura, I'm _fine." _

"Alright."

Trying to navigate an incongruent maze whilst hungover on your emotions wasn't an ideal driving condition. It was just about dark, with the huge monoliths of rock reaching up to the sky over them like dark omnipotent watchmen. The headlights were barely bright enough light the path more than a few metres in front of her, so she was almost certain that Stanford couldn't see where they were going; judging by the amount of times he had nearly directed her into sheer walls. Of course, she didn't blame him. Several of his senses were crippled.

She gave him as much patience as she had probably ever given anyone on the team. Not just because he was getting frustrated, but because Agura wanted to avoid stepping on the invisible chord of dynamite again by mentioning his war-wounds. She kept pushing her morbid curiosity further to the back of her mind. She wanted to say that their trust was on the mend, but every time she looked at him, all she saw was someone who could barely hold himself together. Stanford was keeping a lot of secrets, but she knew she'd have to accept that and give him time to come around and let the dust settle.

_At least she hoped he'd come around. She wouldn't forgive herself if she ruined the trust of the one friend she had left forever. _

"Stanford," she said as gently as possible as they rolled to a halt for the umpteenth, cringing at how patronising she sounded. "If you need to stop and wait a minute, we can. I don't mind."

He was silent for a bit and Agura was worried she had dampened what little enthusiasm he had. His voice almost startled her. "I don't get it, it should be right around here," He whispered.

"Stanford, it's okay, we can keep looking."

"Where are the tracks?"

"Tracks?"

"There are a set of old tracks that lead right up to it." She could hear the shakiness in his voice. "Maybe we haven't gone far enough. Keep driving."

"Stanford-."

"Keeping driving." There was an urgent edge to his voice that ignited her uneasiness and made her speed up just that little bit more.

The headlights hit a dull shine up ahead and before she could apply the brakes, the tires left coarse sand and hit the obstacle. The vehicle cleared it, but not before hitting it with enough force to jolt her and stall the engine. She let out the breath she had been holding. Roughly wiping the tears of frustration away, she furiously tried to restart the engine, cursing as it roared and spluttered. She slammed her hands on the wheel defeatedly.

"Agura, look."

Peering over the door, she could see the edge of the mangled metal rails, barely shining and red-rusted. Stanford had been right.

"I don't think I can repair the engine in the dark though."

"We can walk, the tunnel isn't much further."

She jumped down, grabbing up as many belongings as she could. As she started to hook things on her belt, she realised she had left her nunchucks back in the basement. She would have to go back another time. She was able to take the food, weapons and water, but she would have to leave some of the spare parts behind. She followed Stanford as he walked alongside the rails in a slow, uneven gait.

When they turned the bend, there was a welcome sight. Agura was expecting to see another grotty mineshaft filled with poisonous fumes and crumbling stalactites She was pleasantly surprised to see a cylindrical tunnel, lined with brick. Strange and almost hauntingly; the power was on. Several dull bar lights were fastened to the top of the tunnel by unstable tangles of cables.

"The power is on?"

"In most of the building it still is, but I don't know where it's coming from." That was slightly unsettling, especially if it was coming being generated from lifeforms somewhere on-world.

The tunnel opened up into an isolated clearing, penned in by sheer drops on each side, at least as far as she could see in the dark. Stanford was directing her towards a side of the canyon where a section of the wall was cut out, or blasted away, creating a huge, sheltered outcrop. When they got closer, she realised that the walls inside were lined with tracks and tunnels and in the centre - there was what seemed to be a watchtower, staggered up on stilts and wedged in between the columns with a spiral staircase creating its spine. Was this what Stanford had been looking for?

She followed his lead to get out as he limped over towards the daunting steps. He didn't go up them. He stood at the bottom, fumbling with something in his clothing as she dropped the gear onto the ground to take a moment's rest. In the near-pitch black darkness she couldn't see what he was doing, but there was a metallic rattling sound, as he opened what she presumed was some sort of metal tin. She then watched him reach up to one of the stilts, where something had been hung on the wall. He set a lantern on the ground and slowly dropped to his knees, hissing slightly with what Agura assumed was pain. She heard the sound of another container being pulled out, followed by a soft thud as he dropped it into the sand.

She heard him growl irritatedly, followed by soft cursing. "Bugger."

"Need some help with that?"

"I've got it." She had to rely nearly entirely on sound to work out what Stanford was doing when there was a sharp scratching sound, followed by a burst of yellow-orange flames. The thing he'd taken off the wall was a gas lantern, and there had been matches in that old tin. There was the tell-tale clicking sound of gas ignition and when he placed the match inside, the old lamp roared to life. He tossed the match into the sand and she watched in awe and as the flame faded to a ghostly blue light before it extinguished, leaving a sharp trail of smoke and the air tainted with a strong smell.

To give Stanford credit where she knew credit was due; she hadn't him thoroughly complain about his predicament once. He hadn't even asked her to do something for him. Her worry spiked when he started carefully scaling the stairs and she followed close behind him, balanced in a position to catch him if he stumbled. She was surprised by how capable he was, despite being in a crippled condition. It seemed like he'd figured out his own survival strategy, just like she had. He had been alone, just like she had. If he hadn't figured out how to sustain himself...Agura shook herself out of those thoughts. Surviving independently, especially in an unknown place, that was something she was used to. She had suspicions that Stanford had been spoon-fed and sheltered by his family his whole life when they first joined the team. His inability to stand on his own two feet was something they used to bicker about constantly. However, his bone-weary, detached composure made her wish for the arrogant, snobbish behaviour that she used to berate him for. But this wasn't living. This was Stanford was trying to survive on autopilot to shut out whatever was troubling his mind.

He pushed the wooden door ajar with his shoulder to enter and it gave easily. The lamp illuminated a room that looked more suited to being set in a wooden cabin. It was cheerful and warm compared to the chilly night air outside. Heat poured in from a small trapdoor on the ceiling, connected to a sturdy ladder. There was a thick, sweet smell of old wood chippings and dust that was only slightly choking. Stanford placed the lantern on a table at the front of the room, in front of a large dusty window that opened out onto the open canyon. She noticed that the corners of the ceiling were draped in spider's webs and that the floorboards creaked in protest as she stepped forward. She swiped her finger through the layer of dust on the windowsill. On the other end of the room was a cabinet and she watched as Stanford forced it open and dropped the box of matches into a pile of tools and equipment overflowing from one of the drawers. She didn't see any personal possessions though. Nothing that screamed that it belonged to Stanford. She had kept a few that she had stored in the tangler at the time. Bizarrely, she watched him take a drink from one of the many silver cans lined up on another small table.

"There's a water supply here?" she asked incredulously.

He hummed in acknowledgement as she took one on her hand. About half-full. Looked like water. Tasted stagnant and earthy and left a metallic tang lingering on her tongue; but it was water. He picked up the lantern and moved over to the ladder.

"Coming up?" She heard his voice echo as his torso disappeared above the ceiling.

"Yeah."

The upstairs opened into a tiny attic. It was uncomfortably warm and stuffy, and they were forced to walk along beams to avoid scratchy isolation. Strangely, Stanford sat there shrouded in all manners of different rags and shawls that he held tightly around himself. She watched him snatch up another threadbare grey cloak from the floor and bundle himself up in it. It was boiling upstairs, and Stanford was wrapping himself in more and more layers with trembling hands.

"Cold?" She offered; concern written on her features. She watched the shaking subside as he sat with his head hung and hands clasped around his middle. She knew basic medical care. CPR, bleeding, poisoning, shock and respiratory emergencies; but after that her knowledge was scattered into pieces. He certainly didn't look healthy.

She reached for him, rubbing his shoulder gently when he didn't shove her away. "Why do you lie down? I think you need to rest, okay?"

"No," he grumbled. "Not okay. Things aren't going to _be _okay, luv."

"Don't say that, Stanford," she snapped.

"Agura," he lowered his voice, "you do realise that we're two humans against God knows how many Red Sentients, don't you? Without Sage, without weapons, there's absolutely nothing we can do. Maybe if we found a battle key, we could get back to earth because I don't want to be a part of this anymore."

"But what if the others are still out there? We can't just leave them in the multiverse with-."

She paused when he started coughing. Coughing violently so that his chest heaved each time he inhaled, gasping for breath. Agura ran her hand down his back in an effort to show comfort, ignoring the chills that she got from running her fingers over the bones that she could feel so easily, even under that fabric. Being dangerously thin wouldn't have been doing him any favours. She held her breath, wishing that the ground would open and swallow her up. However, painstakingly; the coughing did subside. Her teammate seemed so weak, as though a good gust of wind would be enough to knock him over. She tried not to dwell on the pity brewing in her stomach. That wouldn't help either of them.

Stanford finished coughing, roughly wiping his mouth with the back of his shaking hand. He noticed her horrified expression and offered her a morose grimace.

"Bloody hell Agura, don't look at me like that. I'm already aware I've got one foot in the grave. Don't rub it in anymore," he sighed. Agura was slightly surprised by that, given that Stanford had spent all day virtually silent. Agura saw the irritation in his face, but she also noticed the sheen of misery in his sunken-in eye. It shouldn't have shocked her that Stanford was so resigned to the possibility that death was closing in on him, but it did. And it saddened her to see him so hopeless.

"Don't say that," she snapped. She didn't resent him. She resented the thought that one day soon she might not live to see the next morning. She didn't want to entertain the thought that some of their teammates may have already succumbed to that fate. Stanford was alive, so the rest would be too. "Neither one of us is going to die, Stanford."

Stanford scoffed, rolling his eye incredulously. "You might. I'm just about ready for the knacker's yard."

She shuddered at the remark, anger washing over her for a moment. She was angry at herself for being helpless, angry at the Reds for ripping the team apart, angry at Vert for putting them up to this and angry at Stanford for giving up. Dying. She was so afraid of dying.

She gave him a gentle nudge as he haphazardly dropped his shoulders from their tense position. "You-you don't really feel that way, do you? You don't want to die; I know you don't."

"No Agura, I don't _want _to die. But dying is probably better than whatever this is."

"Is 'whatever this is' better than the situation you were in before, where you escaped?"

He froze, thinking and caught off guard for a second. He looked right at her and sighed, admitting defeat. "Anything is better than that."

She smiled half-heartedly. "There you go then, thinking about this won't get us anywhere. Come on, it's late, maybe we should just get some rest and then you'll feel better."

She knew it was wishful thinking - trying to cheer him up - but she had to at least try. Her gentle persuasion had calmed the choppy waters for now and she watched him lie down and stretch out across one of the beams. "Alright."

There was one window in the small attic - a grimy skylight. She settled herself down under it on a long beam of wood, using the cloaks that he had thrown to her as a pillow. She kept away from the old frayed insulation and rusted nails sticking out of the unstable floor below but took off some of her armour and tools; laying her belt next to her. She curled up into a foetal position, retreating into herself, trying to ignore the musty smell of the fabric.

She watched Stanford reach over and turn out the oil lamp. She could just see the outline of his figure as he lay himself back down into a similar unruly heap of blankets and cloaks. He sprawled himself out onto his back, staring at the ceiling.

"Goodnight," she said softly into the silence, feeling the dull aching in her muscles fade away.

"Goodnight, Agura," he echoed softly.

"And, Stanford?"

He hummed in acknowledgement,

"Don't give up, we'll make it."

He rolled over to look at her and Agura could just barely see the outline of his face in the dark. "At what cost?"

She closed her eyes. Exactly. _At what cost? _


	6. Ignorance is bliss

**_Ignorance is bliss - An English Idiom used to emphasise that sometimes, it is better not knowing everything about a particular situation._**

* * *

_"What do we do Vert!" _

_"What's the plan!"_

_Several panicked voices were being patched through the Reverb's radio, its advanced audio enhancers picking up the low murmurs of distress and high-pitched gasps of terror. He kept his eyes fastened forward, gripping the steering instruments. _

_His mind was scrambling over itself to look for help, look for leadership, look for control, look for anything that would get him out of there. Everyone was screaming at each other, several voices meshing together into a remix that carried the same tune of fear. Terrified, he could hear the whole Battle Zone exploding around him, but Stanford just kept his gaze fixated on the Saber's tail. He was hemmed into the middle of the pack and vaguely aware of being flanked by Zoom and Agura. _

_"Follow me! If we can slipstream into one of the battle zones and cut down the numbers, we might be able to get back to earth. They can't follow us there for now and-." _

_Vert's voice cut out as rounds of fiery shells began falling around them. He banked hard left, barely avoiding an explosion just inches off to the right. Stanford's heart was in his mouth as he was just barely able to stop the Reverb from fishtailing out of control. _

_Bloody hell. He could see them coming over the mountains in droves. Swarms of red surging right at them from every side. Portal upon portal opened with a thunderclap, leaving them swamped in a sea of pure crimson. The sensors in the Reverb were screeching, warning him of impending impacts from every side. _

_He was seeing Vert's calm, level-headed leadership unravel right in front of him as they veered onto a different path to avoid a stream of Red Sark coming their way. The Reverb was whining in protest and he slammed it into a lower gear to take the hill, dropping into a pass swarming with even more sark. Blasts from the Splitwire rocketed ahead and cleared a path in the robots, some of which Vert managed to clear with the Saber._

_He activated the sonic cannons, slipstreaming behind Vert and picking out any stragglers that the Saber didn't slice in half. _

_Two fireballs, courtesy of Kyrosis, converged and crashed down onto Vert. The back of the Saber was engulfed in flames right in front of him. _

_He screamed, slamming the brake pedal to the floor as the cars collided. The impact was hard; pain exploding in his temple as his head slammed forward into the controls. _

_More screams through the radio as what he could only assume was one of the larger vehicles on the team ploughed right into the back of him. The shocksuit absorbed the majority of the blast, but the Reverb was spun out of control, flipping over in the dust and landing on its roof, trapping him inside. _

_Disorientated, upside down and vaguely aware of the blood dripping from his nose, he drifted out of consciousness to the sound of familiar engines fading in the distance, drowned out by fierce roars of approaching adversaries, echoing around in his head-_

* * *

Startled awake, Stanford could only blink tiredly as the visual of the Reverb's roof slowly faded away into the dusty beams of wood that travelled above his head. Trace amounts of pain clung to his numbed limbs. The coarse, chapped skin on his face was pinched tight as he grimaced, struggling to turn himself over and sink back into reality. It didn't matter how many times he woke up from _those _dreams - the sudden silence was always jarring. Bad dreams were nothing new - he'd had frequent night terrors growing up, enough to disturb the rest of the household and get backlash from his brother when he'd wake up crying for their parents in the middle of the night. They had lessened as he'd got older and had disappeared almost completely during his time with the Battle Force 5. With his friends gone, they had increased _tenfold. _It wasn't like when he was younger when he could let people convince him that the things he feared weren't real. That he was just being childish. Pathetic even.

He was still pathetic, but the recurring themes of those nightmares were incredibly real, almost tangible. He couldn't convince himself that they were made up because they _were_ his past. They _had _happened. It was plausible that the Red Sentients could find him at any time and reclaim their escapee; he knew.

Even the 'good' dreams were insufferable because getting thrown back to a reality where his existence wasn't pure misery was something he couldn't get back to. It was bliss to be able to escape the pain for just a few minutes, but that meant he only crashed back down to reality harder.

There was the sound of something stirring next to him, and he froze up. The sound of heavy but even breathing made him relax as he realised who it was. He turned his head and glanced at Agura who was sleeping a few feet away, curled into herself. The red, early morning light was seeping through the foggy skylight, bathing them in a faint pink glow. God, he wished he could sleep that easy. A more spiteful part of him felt envious; envious that Agura could have gotten away so easily, managing to escape the worst of the tyranny. Another part felt guilty; guilty for shutting her out and shunning her help. Why wasn't he letting her help? She knew much more about survival than he did. Maybe she would know what to do and he wouldn't have to keep making poor decisions on his own.

She stirred slightly and Stanford noticed the large knife she'd left next to her. His mind flashed back to the prior morning. It was strange that he didn't really harbour any bad feelings over it. She didn't know that. He knew she probably thought she was walking on eggshells around him. He had hit out first. He could have seriously injured her. As soon as she'd shouted and he'd recognised her voice, he'd stopped struggling. Looking back on it retrospectively; he was just too dumbfounded to do anything else. He'd spent most of the day thinking he'd been dreaming, going along with whatever she was promising because he was expecting to wake up alone again. Seeing that she was still there had warmed whatever withered strand of hope he had left. He'd fallen to quite the low, but she'd seemed so willing to help, to fix whatever she could. It wasn't like they could 'fix' the multiverse though. It was much too late for that.

He tried to ignore the bitter, metallic taste coating his tongue. His mouth was so dry, rough like sandpaper and drier than the barren dustbowl that he had been forced to inhabit for so long. The extra-terrestrial fruits and kernels that he had gorged himself on last night had temporarily filled the chasm in his withered stomach - this was the first day in_ weeks_ that he had slept on a satiated stomach. He knew that although the food could have been the most repelling, near-inedible shit he'd ever tasted; he still would have devoured it. He had come to realise that the luxury of choice wasn't an option when it came to starving to death but _ohhhh _what he wouldn't give for a piping hot plate of bangers and mash, or a bacon sarnie, or a serving of fish and chips.

"Bugger," he growled softly as a fresh wave of aching coursed through him as his stomach began to cry once more, awakened by the thought of his comfort food from back home. His body was begging for sustenance, but he had nothing to quench it with. It would be rude to wake Agura up and badger her for something to eat. She had travelled a long way. She needed the rest. He had been getting by on the bare minimum for so long; he could manage it for just a little bit longer. He sat up, bracing ready for the surge of pain from his leg. _That _was definitely something he could do without.

_The Diads had hurriedly assured him that it wasn't broken, that 'if the master had snapped it in two, then he would really have something to scream about'. _

**_He had plenty to scream about when he woke up choking back sobs because he was in too much pain to move._**

He cringed as he forced his legs to bend, sucking in a breath as to avoid waking Agura. He couldn't hold back the short wince as he moved into a crouch; working the stiffness out of his joints. Agura stirred slightly and he held his breath, watching as she turned over and clutched the cloth tighter to her chest. He was hit by a soft ping of guilt as he saw the shallow gouges on the back of her hands. _God. _Whatever gauze bandage of hope Agura's reasoning had covered his wounds with wasn't going to last long. He could feel the reassurance in his mind starting to unravel. He carefully ran a hand through his hair. He had repressed the memories of the fallout of losing his friends; forcing them down into the same pit that held the rest of his deep insecurities. However, the time in the battle zone had been so isolating and mind-numbingly silent that adrenaline and fear were replaced with boredom and the frustration of waiting for some distant mercy to take him away.

_Then, those memories came back. Every night, he found himself watching the colourised replays of his friends being vaporized, of being dragged back to **their **homeworld…_

"Stanford?" He flinched.

Agura rubbed at her eyes and struggled into a sitting position. He winced internally as he saw the fresh, hardened scabs of the scratch marks on the backs of her hands.

"-Was just getting a drink," he stumbled over his words idly. Horrible memories sank away and the boredom that preceded death clawed its way back to the surface.

_Why was he already hungry?_

She followed him downstairs, hovering over his shoulder like some good-intentioned wraith. Had she always been this paranoid, or was this a recent thing? It didn't matter. He carefully took a hand through his hair, combing through the flecks of sand, dust and wood shavings. The stale water was good to his parched throat.

He could see her out of the corner of her eye, idly drumming her fingers along the parched wood.

"So…anything on the agenda for today?" Maybe conversation would stamp away the awkwardness hanging heavy in the air. He hummed in acknowledgement, putting the near empty can back down with a clatter. Maybe it was her aim to keep his mind occupied, give him some instruction.

_He was tired of deciding the best course of action for himself. Mainly because when it went wrong; he couldn't blame anyone but himself. And his strategies had been going pear-shaped an awful lot since he lost the input of other people-._

"Actually, there was something I wanted to show you."

She seemed to brighten up at that. Anything to alleviate boredom he supposed.

* * *

The trick to getting onto the top of the cliff edge, Stanford had discovered, was to pass through the mines. The ones not saturated with toxic gas. There was one directly connected to the watchtower, and he had left several items of scraps in there to create a breadcrumb trail to the exit. He had been practically leaning on Agura for the past day and a half and now, he could feel Agura's discomfort as she followed him through the dark, claustrophobic space. He heard her wince and stumble over a loose chunk of rock behind him.

"Need me to slow down?" A rare sliver of confidence crept into his tone, which Agura responded to with a scoff.

"Whatever you need to tell yourself, Stanford. How can you actually tell where you're going?"

"I've done this at least a hundred times, regardless of how atrocious my eyesight is." It left a bit of a bitter taste in his mouth to say it, but it was true.

He could feel the heat of the rising sun catch his face as they ascended out of the tunnel. The taut skin on his face burned as he blinked a couple of times, trying to adjust to the glaring light. The desert stretched out into shallow dunes for miles, shrouded in a soft pink mist courtesy of the cool morning dew that hung in the air. Despite this, his eye could still find what he was looking for - the structures that were barely visible on the horizon.

Agura had followed his gaze and found the same thing he was looking at.

"Some sort of settlement?"

"Not sure, it's impossible to tell from here. But because one of us now has a vehicle, do you think it's worth checking it out?"

Agura seemed hesitant. "Maybe, but what if there is something still living there?"

"Agura," he said gently. "This place is abandoned, trust me. Nobody has been here for months, years even."

"There's a first time for everything," she muttered.

Stanford huffed in annoyance. "We still need supplies," he chided.

He watched her roll her eyes. "At the first sign of a trap, we're getting out of there."

"Fair enough."

He watched her run a hand through her pinned back hair. "Now we've just gotta hope that I've got enough gasoline to get us there. Or else we'll be stranded in a sand dune."

"If you need vehicle supplies, this will be the zone to find them in."

She stood to his left, where his view was obscured, but he could still hear her sigh as she stretched. "A sentient chip vehicle would be great right about now."

_God, what he wouldn't give for that. A vehicle with a sentient chip. Weapons, an identity module - the lot. _

He was suddenly aware of her clearing her throat, possibly to get his attention as he turned to face her.

"...Maybe you should wait here. I'll walk and go get the car."

He frowned at the vague nature of her statement. He took a more authoritative stance. "I do know the way, Agura."

She put her hands up defensively but adopted a gentler tone. "I know you do, but I'll be back before you know it."

He was well aware of the unsavoury fact that he would only slow her down. She knew that just as well as he did. She just wasn't saying it out loud to try and spare either his feelings or his pride.

Not that there was much point. Pride and personal feelings didn't matter now,_ not anymore._ He gave a dry laugh and gently clapped her on the shoulder.

"Agura, you can say it. It doesn't bother me. I know I'm bloody useless most of the time."

As he expected, she stepped in quickly to dispute him, giving him a reproachful nudge. "Stanford! Don't say that!"

"It's true."

"No, it's not. You're injured and you've been through a lot, but that doesn't make you useless, Stanford." It was unusual to see the more vulnerable side of Agura. Agura, who had determination and stubbornness to spare, Agura who never let anyone see her crack. Agura, who he had seen break down into tears next to him more than once yesterday. He'd _never _admit it to her, but this is what he needed after spending so much time alone.

"I'll be right back, okay?" He let her squeeze his shoulder in reassurance. He bit the inside of his cheek and sulked. It made him feel immature; like a needy child, but he knew she'd be back as fast as she could. "I promise."

He knew he'd have to give in. If only to make her feel better. He slowly peeled her hand off his shoulder. "Be quick."

"I'll be as fast as I can."

* * *

He sat waiting on the steps of the watchtower, watching her silhouette dissipate slowly into the dust. Worry was still gnawing at the back of his mind. His worst fear was that she would up and leave him to fend for himself. After going just one day without feeling lonesome, he wasn't sure if he could cope with that feeling again. It made him wonder.

_Were there others out there? _

If Agura escaped, then everyone else had to have been taken prisoner. Were they feeling the same desperation? The same raw hope that someone else out there across millions of miles of space could still be alive?

"If they're not _dead, _that is," he whispered to himself with a shudder. They had to be. He was the _least _resourceful man on the team. Sherman and Spinner could decode virtually any technology, Tezz had survived alone on a desolate moon for years, and Vert had enough courage to take on the leader of the Red Sentients with just a sword. _Surely, _they weren't the only ones left?

His woes were soothed by an unhealthy, mechanical engine roar. Agura was fast approaching, and her tires showered him with a cloud of dust and grit as she slowed to a halt.

She stepped out looking smug, and he couldn't help but make a quip. "You know Agura, in the sunlight, it looks that much more like a bucket of bolts."

She playfully elbowed him in the ribs. Normality was a godsend. "Come on, let's just go."

* * *

Their idle chatter began to taper off as they approached the small hamlet on the edge of the dunes. The lack of any natural sound aside from the howling wind put them on edge and as Agura killed the engine; Stanford could hear it whistling through the gaps in the metal silos that were half-sunk into the sand. Or rather, carried by the wind, the sand had found its way inside grain by grain and piled itself up into large drifts.

He tentatively followed Agura towards what _should _have been a house. A place full of sound, comfort and colour reduced to a battered shell. The abrasive sand had peeled away the layers of paint, revealing old bricks, and the red-tile roof, thatched with straw had sections that were caved in, allowing spots of sunlight to filter down from above.

Stanford wrinkled his nose. "See? Abandoned."

The walls were completely void of anything except for chipping paint and he supposed that any previous furniture had already been buried under the sand a long time ago.

He could hear Agura over in another room causing a disturbance. He peered around the doorframe, only to find her fighting to open a set of drawers half-submerged in sand.

"What are you doing?"

"Want to stop slacking and help me with this?" He rolled his eye, but by the time he had limped over, she had already wrenched the top drawer from its resting place.

He coughed, clearing the cloud of dust and grime in front of his face that had surged up from the sudden movement. Agura dropped it into the sand with a dull 'thump' and began rifling through the set of ancient belongings. Stanford watched attentively over her shoulder as she sifted through old, oil-stained rags and clothes until she found an ancient-looking notebook. They shared a glance as she turned the rough, well-loved cover over and they both focused on the first page, yellowed with age.

Stanford chewed his lip in a ponder at the deep black alien scriptures embossed onto the page. To some distant species smart enough to build iron tools and industry - this had been a language. To him, it looked like gibberish. Squashed up text that resembled symbols more than letters written by a pen that was blotting far too much ink onto the page.

He watched as she kept flipping through the notebook. Page after page of the same unearthly text that was somehow composed enough to be set out in lines. Another thing he noticed: smaller scrawls of symbols in the top right-hand corner of the pages, and the entries seemed to be headed by some kind of title.

"Maybe it's a type of journal?" Agura sounded like she was also grasping at straws to try and make sense of what she was looking at.

"Could be."

She kept flipping through page upon page until a splash of colour caught his eye from a page tucked into the back of the book.

"There, at the back, what's that?" He pointed to it and she tugged it out. A page devoid of anything aside from a series of bold blue lines and connecting spheres, painted in straight, parallel and perfectly perpendicular lines. It looked like a map, or a circuit board drawing, but it was hauntingly reminiscent of Blue Sentient design.

"It almost looks Sentient." A haunting reminder of Sage appeared in his mind as he tried to visualise where he had seen those symbols in the past. "Blue Sentient."

"It's possible," Agura said, rubbing her face in thought. "If this place had been settled for long enough, Sentients could be ingrained into their culture."

"In history maybe. This place was abandoned long after Sage froze the Reds and the vandals wiped out most of the blues." Stanford thought for a second. He took a deep breath. _Dangerous territory. _"Do you think this place became abandoned _before _or after we...y'know...opened the lid of the entire Red Sentient army?"

He tried to swallow the lump rising in his throat as Agura went silent for a moment. Was she about to berate him for that?

"It's plausible... but there's not really any signs of a struggle." She didn't sound entirely happy with him and the air was beginning to turn sour. It was probably best if he let himself out.

"Yeah. I'm just going to...check one of the other buildings."

"Don't wander too far," she warned, already busying herself with rooting through the second drawer.

He awkwardly trudged back through the empty doorway to the hall. He was back out under the blinding light of the sun that had now found its position in the centre of the sky. Frustrated, he harshly kicked up a clump of sand and watched it dissipate into the wind.

_What was he doing bringing that up around her? _

How many more mistakes was he going to keep making? He had just got one of his friends _back. _Bad enough that his head kept replaying his own mistakes, but why couldn't he keep himself from reminding everyone else of the ones they had made as a group? It had killed Sage, as well as who-knows how many others across the multiverse. The Reds may have even breached earth by now and caused soaring human casualties.

He roughly wiped the side of his face that wasn't terribly marred. He wasn't doing himself any favours. She had _every _right to be angry with him.

"Shit!" His hand flew to his chest.

God he was an anxious mess. He'd wandered into another house so deep in his thoughts that he had been startled by a metal chest lurking in one of the doorways. It wasn't bolted shut, but the lid was stiff and it took a great deal of strength - that_ he didn't have - _to wrench it open. He frowned. It was pretty much full of junk. Aside from a relatively new wrench that he tucked into the waistband of his worn-out jeans, everything else was either covered in oil stains or encrusted with rust.

There was a dark coloured wardrobe on the far side of the room, sand propping its door shut. He began digging a trench with his hands, enough for him to tug it open, enough to peer in.

There was light peeking out from something in there, but he couldn't see what.

He gave it one final tug and the door gave way. A pile of items flooded out, including the one creating the glow as it tipped out of a small box and rolled to a stop. The now bright blue glow framed his face in surprise.

"Agura!"

Evidently, she still cared about his sorry self, enough to come running when he called. She stood in the doorway with a concerned look on her face. "Are you alright?"

He picked the glowing Blue Sentient Data Log up out of the sand and dusted it off with a sheepish grin. "Look what I found."

"You just found that now?" She crouched down next to him in awe as he passed the orb to her. "Too bad we can't open it without a sentient," she sighed, weighing it in her palms.

"What do you think it's doing here?"

"Sage said the Blues offloaded their data into logs when their planet was taken over. They got spread out all over the multiverse. Which explains why Zeke managed to find one on earth."

Stanford suppressed a chuckle as memories of Handler corners and its quirky citizens came flowing back to him. "That was the time he almost dropped an obelisk on you, right?"

She scoffed and for a second, he thought he saw her flash a genuine smile. "Stanford, he _did _drop an obelisk on me. Though, he did save me from the Sark." They shared a pause. He never thought he'd miss diving headfirst into death-trap battle zones to fight alien robots or mutant animals. He _did _sorely miss the post-mission banter that they shared at the diner afterwards.

"Never thought I'd miss that," she said, shaking her head.

He swallowed any brewing bitterness he had over it. That would have to wait. He held his tongue, hanging his head.

"Come on, let's grab anything else of value and then head back," he suggested, gingerly testing the waters.

"Yeah," she sighed. He watched her carefully tuck the data log into a satchel on her waist. "Let's go."


	7. Seeking solace

**Seeking solace - to seek relief from grief or disappointment. I hope that you're all staying safe in lockdown wherever in the world you may be. This fic has been one of the things keeping me busy and since posting the last chapter, I've come back to my notes and now have the rough plot of the whole fic outlined and as long as my current motivation continues, I should be updating no less than monthly. Also, I've been going through starting with old chapters and adding illustrations to them, which can be seen on the version of the fanfiction on AO3**

* * *

It had been at least a week, but it couldn't have been more than two that she had spent here. Food supplies were starting to run low and her patience was wearing even lower. Tempers, however, were running very high. It was astonishing just how fast dwindling food, stale water and stinging sand could pit otherwise friendly faces against each other. Mix that together under the broiling desert sun and tensions begin to bubble over.

"For pity's sake Agura, just come off it already!" The pitched irritation in Stanford's voice pinched a raw nerve inside Agura who was simmering with frustration. "Not all of us have had it as easy as you!"

His words struck a chord and she found herself narrowing the space between them and leaning into his space, a dark scowl spread across her features. Stanford - who could be rather cowardly at times and would almost always back down from a challenge - brazenly matched her step. "You know, Stanford," she growled, "Not everything is about you. Maybe you should consider that there are other members of our team. Innocent people who haven't made it this far."

For a moment, he recoiled, and she caught the flash of guilt on his face. Was it guilt? Regret? Or hurt?

If he was going to take the fears that she had confided in him and throw them back in her face; he'd have something else coming. "You're being selfish."

"I'm being selfish?" His voice was quiet at first, but she heard it crack as regret warped into anger. "Tell me Agura, how am I selfish? Do you have any idea what you managed to escape from?"

Anger subsiding for a moment, Agura's frown flatlined. "You're absolutely right, I don't." Her face softened for a moment. If only he wasn't so stubborn, she could get him to open up to her. "Maybe if you _told _me, Stanford-.

"If it was that easy, Agura, do you not think I would try? Do you know what I would give to not be totally helpless? To have gotten away with just a few scratches on the backs of my hands? If anyone is selfish, it's you."

_That _shouldn't have stung her as hard as it did, but the traces of envy and almost-jealousy in his voice ignited her anger. Part of her knew that there were more mature, more responsible ways to contain the situation, but another part of her wanted to serve him with an even sharper sting. Give him a taste of his own medicine.

"Really! With everything I've done to help you, all the patience I've given you. And for you to accuse me of taking that for granted? You know what Stanford, maybe if you hadn't been sheltered and spoon-fed for your entire life and didn't expect things to be done for you, maybe you wouldn't be in this situation. Maybe this is on you."

_Maybe you deserved it._

Those words left a putrid taste in her mouth and she wished she could have buried them. Buried them and stopped such ugly thoughts from leaving her mouth. She knew that her poisonous words had bitten Stanford – because he drew silent and suddenly became very interested in scuffing the rubble on the ground with his boot.

He looked up, "You know what? I don't need you." He scowled at her, turning on her heel. "Just leave me alone."

She berated herself for not apologising, for not admitting there and then that her words had been way out of line. She clenched her fists. "Fine"

"Fine," he spat, storming off into the desert.

She didn't follow after him. It had only taken her a second, but one second of lost control had possibly just cost her only friend left.

"_That was the wrong thing to say, Agura. This isn't his fault; this isn't your fault. He's not being selfish; he's reacting to trauma."_

Going after him now wasn't going to help. Stanford needed time to stew over what she had just said, and cool down. She had plenty of time later when the waters had calmed to find him and patch things up. She dragged her drained form towards the steps to the watchtower and began to climb. He wouldn't go far. He wouldn't leave without her.

With the grimy skylight propped open, she had spent the past few hours up on the roof, sitting on the corrugated metal with her knees tucked up to her chest, the rock face looming behind her and shielding her from the full force of the sun. She stared out onto the horizon with brooding eyes. She couldn't even remember why she had been so angry with him in the first place. There wasn't really any use in getting Stanford to open up about anything, he kept his secrets as tightly bound as the cloaks that he was constantly bundling himself up in. She could judge his upbringing however she wanted, but she _knew _it was wrong to say that because of it, he had doomed himself to the wrath of Krytus. It would be easier to empathise with him if she had known what his fate had been. Though, looking at the grotesque wounds on his body sent her imagination reeling. And the worst part? She could almost guarantee that were innocents all over the multiverse suffering a worse fate at the same hands.

It wasn't just their food stores that were running low. After their initial rejoice of finding one another alive, Agura had felt their morale slowly draining away. Stanford's gloomy outlook on life was contagious and it clung to her like a pair of iron weights. She could see it in the way he struggled in his sleep and in the despondent look on his face whenever she mentioned the thought of home. She had lashed out to protect herself. Protect the few shards of hope she had left. She had always tried to surround herself with strong people, who were a living, breathing reminder that her efforts weren't in vain.

War broke people, that much Agura knew.

But had it broken Stanford?

Not past the point of repair, she hoped.

She caught sight of him, wandering along one of the far walls. Despite the fact that the figure was hooded, the dirt encrusted violet boots and the familiar limp in his step provided her with ease. She watched him ascend along a thin path, up towards one of the caves, located a few meters up. She watched him hesitate for a moment, look around and then become enveloped by the darkness as he slipped inside the rock maw. He had never pointed that area out to her before; what was he up too?

Curiosity was gnawing at her, egging her on to follow him, but common courtesy also nagged at her mind. What if he had gone in there for some time by himself, where she wouldn't be able to find him?

At the same time, if he didn't want her there, he was sure she would make that very clear. Besides, he shouldn't be hiding anything from her.

She slowly inched her way down towards the skylight, holding the frame and lowering herself down to the attic floor. She was out the door and down the clunky steps in minutes. She jogged across the sand and made it to the gravelly path that Stanford had walked minutes before.

She peered into the jaws of the cave. Bizarrely, the smooth rocks covering the floor of the cave were slick with water that moved sluggishly in small streams and then evaporated when it reached the sight of the harsh desert sun. Other than watching her steps on the soaked rocks, the cave was easily large enough for her to move around in. It wasn't completely dark, either. The rocks were illuminated by a deep blue light that seemed to be emanating from deeper in the cave. She trod carefully, avoiding the series of metal chains hanging from the ceiling. She tried to keep her footfalls soft, as to avoid waking anything living in there and not startle Stanford…however far ahead he was.

There was a soft, rumbling sound being echoed between the walls, accompanied by dripping, and the gentle clinking of the chains as they swung in the soft breeze. Ahead, she could see what she thought was the back wall and end of the cave. Light was shining or reflecting across from an opening elsewhere and projecting onto it. The further she moved; the rumbling sound became clearer. It was running water, painting the image of a small, sub-surface waterfall in her head. There was a bigger stream of running water deeper within the cave. Light was hitting that water and creating wavy, blue-tinted shimmers of light on the back wall. Maybe this was where Stanford was getting their water from?

She could feel the water beginning to seep through her well-loved boots, and she bit her lip as she found herself stepping in one too many puddles and creating deep splashing sounds that would be drawing attention to her presence.

Speaking of which, not all of the splashing sounds were coming from her. The back of the cave was indeed what she was looking at, but it opened out into a room, where the sounds were emanating from. She peered around the corner.

A series of large boulders sat to one side of the area, framing the ledge when the ground dropped down to hold a small lagoon. Water entered from a small stream on one side and exited through a small gap in the rock on the other. There were small gaps in the ceiling rock, allowing light to filter through and give the water its brilliant light blue glow that seeped up the walls.

Stanford was sat on the ledge, legs dangling over the edge into the water. The source of the splashing sounds – Stanford washing his arms and cupping his hands to the water to drink.

She cleared her throat, just loud enough to announce her presence but not startle him too hard. He jumped slightly and turned his head, but not enough for her to be out of his blind spot.

"Uh…hey," she sighed, waiting for some kind of indication that she was allowed to approach. He turned his head in her direction, but that wasn't to say that he could see her.

"Hey," he said dryly. She climbed across the rocks, slipping down onto the ledge with him.

The silence was jarring. She needed to say something. "Look, Stanford, about earlier-." She swallowed the lump forming in her throat. Anger and bitterness were missing from his expression, but his eyes – even the blind one, drooping from soreness or fatigue – held apprehension. "I know we said no more apologies, but – you deserve one. What I said was way out of order. You're not being selfish, and this isn't your fault."

There was silence for a few moments. He cocked his head at her and sighed. "You're not selfish either; you've been the one keeping us alive. I didn't mean what I said, I…I can't do this by myself."

She smiled. Agura reached down and slipped her hand into the pool. The cool water brought instant relief to the sores on her palms, soothing her nerves and her body from the relentless humidity of the cavern. The water had to be safe. It was running and she had seen Stanford drinking it. She stopped swishing her hand around in the water. It was almost completely clear, so much so that she could see the ebony pebbles resting at the bottom. Aside from a few rocks large enough to stand on, the centre dropped a few metres. Deep enough to swim across.

"So, we're cool?" she asked.

He paused. Despite her apologies easing his worries, there was evidently still something on his mind. Something that he couldn't quite put into words, which led to a long silence. A nail-biting silence that Agura was determined to break. She pulled off her ruined boots and shrugged herself out of the remainder of her shocksuit. Her shorts and thin t-shirt underneath clung to her skin. Stanford watched her quizzically as she stood up on the ledge, and then dived in, headfirst.

The water was a reprieve, not just from the sunburn and wounds, but it eased the grime, harsh sand and grease from her skin. Being submerged, her senses relaxed, creating a temporary, silent bubble of space. She heard the distorted sound of Stanford calling her as she surfaced, rubbing her face and removing her bandanna and tossing it aside so that her dreadlocks fell carelessly around her shoulders. She laid back in the water with a sigh, opening one eye to glance at Stanford. He looked surprised, raising a brow at her in disbelief.

She smirked. "What? Do you know how long it's been since I last had a bath?"

A thin smile appeared on his face. "Gross." She playfully splashed water in his direction, causing him to lean away in surprise.

She sat up, bobbing in the water, her smile fading for a moment. She extended her hand towards Stanford. "Coming in?"

He chewed his lip indecisively, looking her up and down.

"The water's fine, Stan," she assured.

"It's not that," he admitted. "I don't want to get it in my eye."

"There's a ledge to stand on about a meter in and I can grab you if you slip." She teasingly added "I promise not to pull you under."

"That's very reassuring," he muttered, sluggishly pulling his tank top and cloak off and lowering himself into the water with her. She watched him visibly relax as he sunk into the water up to his shoulders, closing his eye and leaning back against the ledge. She took time softly massaging her fingers into her hair, dipping her head below the surface. When she looked back at him, he was holding himself up on the ledge with his elbows.

She knew she had never seen his arms uncovered before, because she would have noticed the bold, black scripture printed onto the inside of his right forearm. It was of sentient origin, that much she could tell.

"How did you get that?"

She watched his gaze follow her eyes as he self-consciously pulled his arm back under the water.

"Stanford." She gripped his arm to prevent him moving away. He sighed. "Are you sure you want to know, Agura? Because that's not the worst of it."

Agura felt her heart sink.

He moved to a side of the edge where he was standing waist deep in water and upon turning around, Agura brought her hand to her mouth. Down the middle of Stanford's back was a series of thin white lines cut into his skin. They crisscrossed one another as they stretched across his torso. She reached out, but hesitated. She didn't want to say it out loud, but she was very conscious of what kind of weapon could have made those marks.

Stanford seemed to pick up on her hesitation. "They don't hurt…at least not anymore." He didn't even flinch when she ran her fingers over the slight bumps on his skin, albeit with extreme care.

"When we were in that battle zone," he broke into speech and Agura moved away, motioning him to continue, "…my car may have gone up in flames, but that wasn't how I got the scars. Any of them."

"I don't doubt that." She put a hand on his shoulder in reassurance.

"I was stranded. I," she could hear him starting to choke up. "I was thought I was going to die there. But they didn't kill me. They…they took me back to their homeworld."

She just kept listening, silently nodding to keep pace with the information rushing through her head, and the many gruesome questions that clawed their way to the surface.

"I, I don't know why they kept me alive. I don't know why they didn't take me where they took the others, I don't know why but I soon thought that I would have been better off, y'know, _dead."_

"Stanford." His eyes were glazed over. Like he was talking to her, but he wasn't truly hearing her because his mind was _somewhere_ else.

He swallowed thickly, drawing in a hard breath, "I tried calling for you lot over the radio, but nobody would answer me-."

"Stanford," Agura warned, trying to snap him out of it.

"_Everyone else was gone!"_

"Stanford!" As soon as she'd raised her voice, he'd stopped. He looked right at her, not just right through her. Agura started again, fiddling with the hem of her shirt as she tried to think of a different question to draw his focus to. "How, how did you end up getting out?"

The haunted, deer-in-the-headlights look never quite left his face. "Shocking I know, but apparently not all of the unfrozen Reds want war with humanity, or the multiverse. Some of them, they still think like Sage did – enough to trust humans and…help prisoners escape."

Agura's mind was racing, trying to take in all the information that it had just absorbed. Stanford seemed to slowly revert back to his usual state of mind once he had relayed his vague story to her.

It might have been vague, but it left hundreds of unanswered questions to Agura, and the fact that she knew he wasn't in the state to elaborate on those horrors just made the abyss inside of her swell larger. Stanford lowered his hand down to the water, and then brought it up to his face, swiping his thumb across his cheek and revealing a section of clear skin underneath the layers of soot and grime.

So, he'd been saved by a sentient. A red one at that. "I'm…surprised to hear that your saviour was a red. Going against the wishes of the rest of their race."

He nodded. "_She_ wanted to help. She took pity on me. She put herself in harm's way, I mean, enough to save my _other _eye." He sighed, regretfully, sinking back down into the water "that doesn't stop the bloody wound from burning, though."

She peered at his face. "There's a lot of dirt collected around the edges, maybe if you bathed it-."

"That makes it hurt more."

Agura turned, ripping a strand of fabric from her t-shirt – the only clothing article not covered in mud – rolling it up into a wad. "Here, why don't you let me try?" He gave her an incredulous look, scoffing.

"Do you think I can't wash my own face?"

"I'm not saying that. I'm saying that you can't see where the edges are without looking in a mirror." He still looked hesitant. "What? I'll be as gentle as I possibly can, I promise."

She soaked the strip of fabric and slowly began dabbing away at where skin met thick scar tissue. "It might sting a little." She felt him judder underneath her fingertips, wincing slightly as she pressed down. Agura was being as gentle as possible, but Stanford still had one hand curled around her wrist as she worked. She wanted to hope that it was a gesture of solidarity, but it could have been self-defense, waiting to yank her hand away when she pressed too hard or clipped one of the nasty scabs on his face. She had wiped it clean all the way up to his scalp when he sat up and gently pulled her hand away.

"That's enough, but…thank you."

"Don't mention it. I can't see any signs of infection, but I don't think the skin can heal more than it already has, sorry Stan," she said with an air of empathy. "How…how's your eye?"

He didn't keep it open very often, which was a smart move to avoid infection getting in. She watched his discoloured eyelid flicker before she caught sight of cloudy grey as he cracked it open. His wounds had become increasingly easier to look at the longer they had spent time together, but she still got a chill from seeing the silvery pupil and the vicious whorls and coils of scarred skin around it because each time she looked - she was reminded that the damage was irreversible.

"About as good as it looks," he said dryly.

"At least it's not infected. Trust me, it's not fun."

"You speaking from experience?" he asked with a grimace.

She looked down at her right arm and began unwinding the tightly bound fabric around her bicep. Yellowish and raw, the cut had become infected at some point after it had been sliced open by glass from the tangler's cab during her last battle with the sentients. There wasn't anything she could about possibly alien bacteria other than bind it tightly and bear it. Stanford looked concerned.

"It's okay, really. It doesn't hurt unless I touch it," she half-lied. Her friend was paranoid at the best of times, no need to bring up worse case scenarios now.

"Is…there anything I can do? To help I mean." She smiled. No matter how many squabbles they picked with each other and how many times they got sick of each other's company – she knew that she had someone she could trust to watch her back. One problem at a time. She still had more jump crystals. If they ran out of food or water or this place became too dangerous, they could go look elsewhere. It wasn't worth fighting over. She needed somebody to trust now more than ever before.

"It's okay, I got it," she replied, wrapping it away, out of sight, "but thanks." She bound it back up and hauled herself onto the smooth ledge that the water was lapping away at gently. Stanford leant with his back against it, sinking deeper into the water with a tired sigh. She looked at the trembling water, watching the dark outline of her face shimmering in the ripples. Even with the deep blue of the water, she could see the faint outline of scars on her dark skin, some shining like spotlights now that the mud and grime had been washed away.

"I wish I could say that I recognised my own face…" she muttered under her breath.

Stanford gave her a quizzical look, hauling himself up to sit next to her. Upon looking into the brook, the corners of Stanford's mouth twitched up with a smile, but not necessarily a happy one.

"You know, by some miracle that we were able to assemble the team and get back to our past lives on earth...it would never be the same."

Stanford shook his head in silent agreement with her. "That's- that's probably what scares me the most." he added quietly. She swished her hands through the water, watching her reflection rematerialise. She had to agree with him. No matter how many times she stirred up waters or smashed mirrors, the image of gaunt cheekbones, weary eyes and the distinguished marks of Kyburi's claws across her face could only fade. Just like the glaring wounds on Stanford, they would never truly be expunged from her subconscious or her skin.


	8. Bad Omens

_**Bad omen - A sign, either real or imagined, of ill fortune or catastrophe in the future.**_

* * *

They could call him what they liked; a nostalgic, or a wistful sap, but Stanford was sure there was something euphoric about feeling the comforting warmth of the sun's rays on his skin. Especially after spending time on a planet that harboured nothing but scorching darkness, where looking out onto the lonely horizon yielded only crimson fold mountains and a black sky that was crowded with blazing moons.

A little too insecure to admit it out loud, adapting to unwelcome change had always been a struggle for Stanford.

Maybe in another life, where he was slightly less of a pessimist, he'd be able to find a silver lining before his insecurities conjured up a worse-case-scenario. But in his defence, the multiverse had thrown _enough_ bullshit his way recently. He had every reason to be pessimistic. He had every reason to be watching his back, expecting persecution to be waiting for him around every corner.

When he had first been marooned on the planet that he and Agura were cohabitating, the sun had been his worst adversary. The powerful heat had scorched his pasty complexion and sapped what depleted energy reserves he had left. The real kicker? After spending so long in crimson red where his eyes had only seen the darkest shades of black known to man - when the sunlight came, his brain was deceived by his new field of view, which was half bright colour spectrum and half vague grey shapes that danced across his line of vision. Then, he had to finally accept that there was no restoring what the red sentients had robbed him of.

If he had to compare it to something mundane, Stanford would liken it to a broken screen. Split right down the middle, one half of the screen worked correctly and the other was full of slow-moving static that buzzed and twitched, almost like radiation was seeping into his head. If he had let it, the static would have slowly but surely eaten into what was left of his sanity by now because his brain was convinced both eyes should be functioning the same and couldn't comprehend why they weren't. This discomfort was so overpowering at times that Stanford couldn't help but reach up and press his palm against the socket, just to quickly check that an eye was still there, and not just empty space.

The first time Agura had seen him doing it she'd scolded him. In fact, she'd ripped into him, shut down every futile retort he made and then she'd proceeded to lecture him about the dangers of getting foreign bacteria in his wounds.

Sometimes, she felt more like his _mother _than his friend.

She softened slightly when he explained the reason behind it, and after a bit of deliberating, she told him what the feeling was. Phantom pains, apparently.

"Sometimes, when people lose a limb, they feel pain from where the missing limb would have been. It's supposedly a response to mixed signals from the brain. Or, the sensation originates from damaged nerve endings or scar tissue, which might be the case here. I know that's not the same as what you're feeling, Stanford, but it could be a similar phenomenon."

That's how Agura had explained it to him, and it did make sense. So, for both of their sakes, he struggled hard with the itching urge to touch it. However, sometimes, away from Agura's watchful eye, he couldn't resist hovering his fingers over the charred skin of his eyelid. Just to check that there was indeed still an eye underneath. Or he would sheepishly approach the water's edge and peer over the side, greeted by the ghostly stranger staring back at him from below. He'd fight against the burning sensation and his weakened facial muscles to crack his eyelid open, just so he could stare impassively back at the silvery orb at the centre of his wound.

After Agura became his substitute doctor, the pains had lessened. Sitting out in the heat was less unbearable and the scar tissue on his face was less taut.

He'd never have the courage to admit out loud just how grateful he was for her help. Though, whenever he tried to return the favour, she was insistent that she didn't need help. Agura was more self-sufficient than he would ever be, but he had a sneaking suspicion that she didn't confess her own issues because she didn't want him to worry. He couldn't help but feel slightly guilty that, as resourceful and smart as Agura was; she was potentially neglecting her own needs to take care of him. Even now, he was sitting on a boulder between the junction of two caves, waiting for her to come back from a scavenging trip. It was easier for him to stay behind rather than dealing with Agura refusing to admit that he was a dead weight, but he couldn't help but feel like he was dead weight. He leant back with a sigh, rested his hands behind his head and stared aimlessly at the patterns in the rocks, swinging his legs back and forth in boredom. He cautiously scratched the side of his face, mindful of the delicate, patchy scabs. It only took catching himself or moving too quickly for the hardened wounds to crack and bleed, creating even deeper craters in the damaged skin.

He flinched as he accidentally clipped one of the scabs on his chin, feeling a sliver of blood travel sluggishly down his jaw. He swiped his finger through it, momentarily entranced.

"_Stanford?"_

"Stanford!"

He sat up suddenly, almost cricking his neck from the speed of his reaction to the urgency in Agura's nearby voice. There was the sound of stones becoming dislodged underfoot as Agura almost tumbled out of the cavern mouth to his right.

The intense worry in her eyes sent alarm bells ringing in his head. His heart sank deep into the pit of his stomach.

"What's wrong? I thought you were looking for supplies?"

"I-." Words seemed to desert her. She was at his side in seconds, forcefully grabbing him by the wrist and tugging her along with him, back into the shadows.

"Agura! What-."

She turned around and shushed him rather harshly. He spluttered, slightly offended, but she didn't seem to notice. His heart was left knocking against his ribs from the shaken look on her face. Once they had both been enveloped by the darkness of the cave, their voices concealed by the babbling of the cavern water, she turned to him.

"Agura, seriously, you're starting to freak me out."

"Be quiet, Stanford. You have no idea how much danger we're in." The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Agura's grip on his wrist only strengthened until she was practically dragging him through the cave. Her dread was infectious, and his apprehension only grew as they drew closer to the light at the other side of the passage. The grip on his wrist had almost become painful as they stood just under the cropped overhang, hiding from the reach of the midday sun.

"Now are you going to tell me what's going on?" Stanford fumbled over his words. He was barely even able to compose the question.

"Sure, just take one look out there."

Agura stood in front of him, almost like a living barrier. He managed to peer over her shoulder, scanning the landscape for any signs of life. The horizon was shuddering in the heat, the dry winds sweeping up loose grains of sand and swirling them across the plains. Nothing abnormal.

"You'll have to forgive me, Agura, but I can't see anything unusual," he whispered.

"Keep looking," she said flatly.

He squinted, eyes scanning both the ground and the sky. Through the dust, something skimmed through the sky. There was a flash of gold, caught in the sunlight before the blip raced past his field of vision and he almost bumped heads with Agura trying to keep track of it. Another brief reflection of sunlight gave away the second hovering spectre, travelling in the opposite direction. The third hovered more slowly along the ground, scanning for signs of life but travelling slow enough for Stanford to figure out what he was looking at.

He let out the breath he had been holding and his shoulders slumped, seemingly in relief. Agura picked up on his body language and turned on him with an incredulous look on her face. "Stanford, do you know what this means?"

He brought his hands up in defence. "Agura, it's fine. This...this has happened before."

Her eyes widened even more. "What do you mean 'this has happened before'!?" she asked in disbelief.

"I _mean, _I've seen drones passing through before. Agura, as long as we stay hidden, they won't know that we're here."

She begrudgingly seemed to accept his words. "Makes sense. The Reds will be expanding their empire, looking for any colonies to conquer until they control the whole multiverse. And this world is completely barren. There is nothing left here for them to burn to the ground. But-."

Stanford's unease grew with her sudden pause. "But?" He repeated, almost sadly as he realised that their relief was short lived.

"The drones only have to look a little bit harder and they'll find evidence that we've been here. If that happens, it's likely that whoever's monitoring them will be making an appearance."

Stanford dropped into a ponder, chewing his lip in thought. He couldn't argue with her reasoning. The drones would be reporting any abnormal activity back to a command post, either of red sark, or the sentients themselves. "What do we do?"

"We need to get to the ATV and move it to somewhere where the drones can't see the contents of it. There's a tunnel branching off here to get to the watchtower. I can get there and get it hidden. If worst comes to worst, I'll come back to you and we can travel off-world-." He stopped her there as he fought down the feelings of slight resentment starting to brew inside him.

"Agura, you do realise that if you get seen and something comes after you, we might not see each other again."

The sheen of boldness never left Agura's eyes. "I'm aware. If by any chance I did get seen and then get caught by scouts - they wouldn't have us both. One of us would still be free to find the others and return to earth." Stanford was deeply uncomfortable with where her plan was heading. "Here, take this. Use it to get off-world if you absolutely have to." She extended her shaking fist towards him and deposited a bypass crystal in his palm. When he didn't move for a good few seconds, staring at the pale crystal in his palm - Agura gently folded his fingers over it and then squeezed his fist.

He swallowed the lump in his throat. He really didn't want to do this. Everything she was saying was logical and sensible, almost painfully so. He could feel his palm shaking in her grip so surely Agura could feel it too?

The last thing he wanted was to be left alone again. He was a poor decision-maker. He was a poor survivalist. He was a poor fighter. Despite feeling like he had grown up virtually by himself; a world without other people was horribly daunting to be suddenly dropped into and Stanford knew it would only shatter his confidence into more pieces the second time. He knew he lacked the skills that Agura used so well to survive alone. Stinging tears began to well up at the corner of his eye. She couldn't just leave the tatters of their mission to him, he was hopeless. He couldn't even protect his friends; how could he protect everyone else relying on them to stop the red sentients?

He wasn't ashamed of the fact that in these short few weeks, Agura had come to know him better than almost anyone else ever had. She picked up on his unease quickly, pulling him into a hug without a second thought.

"I'll be as careful as I can, I promise. It won't come to that" Likewise, he was sure he now understood more about her than anyone on the team had before. She had always been strong, impossibly stubborn and would hunt down anyone who labelled her as helpless. However, he had come to the conclusion that her strong façade was an intricately woven front and what scared him the most was that beneath it; Agura was as frightened as he was.

They swiftly detangled like this was a regular occurrence within their lives.

"Keep an eye on those sentries for me, don't get seen."

"And make sure _you_ come back in one piece."

She scoffed at his comment, holding his gaze for a moment before retreating into one of the side passages. He listened to the sound of her footsteps fading away before slinking down behind a rock and releasing the breath he had been holding.

His mind was starting to overflow with anxiety. The dire thoughts thrashed and twisted through his head in an almost feral way, impossible to cage or pin down. Agura would come back or die trying, he had no doubt about that. With every close brush with death they'd dealt with; Stanford found that his thirst to live was only getting stronger.

Stanford was a shell of the man who once fought for multiversal freedom in the battle force 5 alongside his friends, he knew there was no denying that. However, he wasn't the same man that had been incarcerated by the red sentients either. That Stanford Isaac Rhodes had been hounded by a nagging itch that made him indifferent to death and made him see it as a welcome reprieve from the cruelty he'd endured.

However, Agura's iron will to survive was contagious, and it had weighed heavy on his shoulders rather swiftly. He didn't want her knowing that if they were caught, it was very likely that they would be passed to the highest bidder, and each would be more callous and savage than the last.

A sharp tingle spread up his neck and he pressed his shaking palm against the lumpy scar tissue on his face. Better to steer himself away from _those _thoughts.

He turned, leaning upwards and peering over the rock shielding him to look for any signs of life in the desert. Nothing.

Seeing nothing was unnerving. And hearing nothing was even more unnerving. Any more failing senses could be the end of him. He watched the horizon with growing unease until a droning mechanic sound snared his attention. Taking a moment to completely focus on it, he knew it wasn't Agura because the sound of her jury-rigged vehicle was more of a wavering ungodly spluttering roar than a constant whirring sound.

He saw the bottom half of the sentry hover down into the maw of the cave seconds later and he barely had enough time to drop down behind the rock before it was hovering at the entrance. At least, that was what he assumed it was doing. The sound neither got louder nor quieter, it just kept wavering at that same threatening pitch and there was an ominous red light beaming into the cave. The light grew in ferocity as the sentry hovered deeper into the cave, closer to his position.

He curled up into a ball, trying to make himself as small as possible without making a sound. He had his hand clamped over his face to dull the sound of his rapid breathing - an action that was quickly making him feel nauseous. If its audio enhancers were anything like his reverb's, it could probably pick up the sound of his heart as it hammered against his chest, almost trying to escape his body. It whizzed straight past him, moving deeper into the cave, and expertly weaving between the stalactites and precariously placed boulders. His gaze followed the mesmerising crimson light further into the darkness as it methodically scanned the walls.

He remembered what Agura had said. She had been forced out her last battle zone by sentry drone that had been programmed to torch the entire ecosystem. There was nothing but ruins left to shelter them here, which made it easier to flush them out of hiding. The red sentients sent their machines out to search the far corners of the multiverse to find and enslave any colonies not already under their tyranny. The red sentients were ruthless hunters and they would know just how many humans had escaped their wrath and they would be actively trying to hunt them down and terminate them.

He tensed up at the sound of another sentry entering the cave, this one moving past him and speeding off to the left. Then he could hear one more, which seemed to be moving much slower, almost to the point where it had to have been hovering directly above him. He screwed his eyes shut in dread, carefully pulling his cloak down over his face as far as he could. It drifted over him, following the same path that the others had taken.

Stanford held his breath for as long as he possibly could, listening to the sark travel further into the cave and out of sight. Here he was, cowering from enemies that he once would have been able to blast out of the sky without a second thought. He highly doubted Agura would be hiding in fear like this. She would be in the thick of the action, pushing herself to her physical limits to support those around her. During their last disagreement, Agura had called him sheltered and spoon-fed. She had quickly taken those statements back and assured him that there was no animosity between them. He knew she was right though. If he were even half as self-sufficient as she was, she wouldn't have to keep picking up his slack. At times, he even caught himself feeling envious of her resourcefulness.

He wasn't about to keep sitting there safe and sound whilst she was risking her life to save them both.

Limbs shaking so hard that he could barely stand, Stanford scrambled onto his feet, clumsily clambering his way across the rocks and into the side passage that Agura had disappeared down earlier, wincing at the sound of the stones he had dislodged underfoot. This passage was much more claustrophobic - Stanford had his hands stretched out in front of him, blindly fumbling around for the precarious, jagged edges of the walls ahead. A sentry drone could traverse it, but it would have to travel much slower than a human.

"Blast," he snarled under his breath as his right foot slipped, sending pebbles cascading down the passage and creating a barrage of echoes as he fell flat on his back. He winced. Seconds later; the ominous mechanical humming sound re-emerged from deeper in the abyss. His stomach started tying itself in knots again as he saw the red light in the distance, dull at first but growing brighter. With legs that felt virtually gelatinous, Stanford scrambled backwards as the drone wavered towards him. The overpowering luminosity of the crimson spotlight in the dark forced him to squint. His mind was screaming for him to get up and run. Adrenaline was coursing through his system, but with fear shackling his body to the ground, there was no outlet for his anxieties to escape and he was left paralysed, staring into the empty red lens hovering in front of him.

Entranced, Agura's shout didn't even register with him until she had slammed a sizable rock down onto the sentry. He shielded himself from the flying sparks with his arm, and then he was met by Agura's unimpressed glower.

"You never listen to me, do you?"

Stanford let out a strangled sigh, shakily testing his balance and dusting himself off. Self-loathing began to stir inside him, but he forced it back, settling for a quick retort in defence of his actions. "Hey, in my defence, this place is crawling with them."

"And you're not the only one who's been seen. I'm pretty sure the two I took out on my way back got a good look at me. In other words, we need to get out of here."

"You don't have to tell me twice."

"Come on, it's parked just outside."

True to her words, the hodgepodge of Vandalian and sentient parts was parked in the sand at the bottom of the ledge. This was the only time Stanford would swear that ungodly engine roar had ever been welcomed by his ears. He could almost feel the sense of urgency radiating from Agura as she stamped the gas pedal to the floor. They began weaving between canyons and rock monoliths at a nauseating pace - Stanford was barely able to differentiate between sky and sand, he had no clue how Agura was managing to navigate properly.

The plains that the gorge opened onto reminded him a little too much of Handler Corners. Vast, sweltering, and devoid of everything aside from sands and alien tumbleweed.

They were empty.

Well, until they weren't.

The sound of the warning thunderclap was barely audible over the sound of the whining engine, but the swirling crimson portal that opened in front of them was unmistakable.

Agura saw it and yanked the steering instruments as far to the right as she could. They ground to a screeching halt, showered by sand and gravel from as the two tires that had been airborne landed back on the ground with a clunk.

"What now?" Stanford breathed, staring motionlessly at the churning antimatter abyss, waiting for something hostile to emerge.

"I... don't know." Agura muttered it low, but Stanford could easily hear the lingering fear in her voice.

The pair shared a short but deafening silence and Stanford sent up a prayer that Krytus himself wouldn't come tearing out of the portal towards them. Agura inhaled sharply in front of him, rolling the ATV back through the sand.

The wall of red was broken and five red sark streamed through, surging towards them, head-on. Stanford braced himself as Agura spun them around and put her foot to the floor.

"Where are we going?!" He tried to yell to her over the excessive noise of the engine.

"Anywhere we can lose them!"

He looked back from his position, only to see one of the sark dangerously close to the rear fender. "Agura, I don't want to alarm you, but you need to drive faster!" She suddenly pulled a hard left down a side passage, and Stanford found himself clinging on for dear life to avoid being thrown into the path of the zetners. Agura took them under one of the factory plants, expertly weaving in and out of the iron legs holding its weak, rusted skeleton upright. As they cleared it, Stanford glanced back, expecting them to be almost surrounded.

He was surprised to see that they had drawn back into a condensed group under the factory foundations.

"Agura, wait, they're slowing down!"

They skidded to a halt, facing the crowd of sark. The robots didn't advance.

"I don't get it," he admitted, incredulous.

"This doesn't add up," she growled simultaneously.

Had the glare of the sun on metal always been that bright? The light continued expanding outwards into a dome shape from the zetners, enveloping them and travelling up towards the metal structure they were encompassing. Stanford felt like the spark of dread in his stomach had just been doused in gasoline, because when the energy beam touched the metal of the structure, it started to crumple inwards, imploding and crushing into a cluster.

"What-."

They were hit by a wave of heat as the sparking dome erupted. The crumpled metal was forced apart, flying in all directions as chunks of shrapnel pelted down on them from above. Agura was barely able to pull them out of the way of a steel divider that speared the ground inches away.

Stanford's jaw dropped, "since when could sark do that?!"

Agura's face mirrored his shock. "Since never. The reds must have upgraded them with some cutting-edge sentient tech since our last battle."

"Well if they keep hitting us with that, we're done for!" He noticed Agura, glowering in their direction. "What, what are you thinking?"

"We need weapons to have any kind of chance against that power. This vehicle has a few. Take the wheel for me."

He swallowed the lump in his throat. "Agura, are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Just do it, Stanford!" she snapped.

He slipped into the driver's seat, taking a brief moment to familiarise himself with the controls. It had been months since he had operated anything with wheels, after all. The lead zetner whizzed past them, clipping the rear wheel and startling Stanford into gunning it forwards.

"Line up with them, we've got crossbow bolts we can fire from the front!"

The irony of the situation was slightly distasteful. Agura was usually the all-terrain navigating huntress and he was their artillery marksmen. Though, he was sure any shot at the enemy he could have fired while Agura was driving would have missed; his miserable field of vision would have impeded his precision. Agura fired, the crossbow bolts jamming themselves into the front wheels of a zetner and causing it to career out of control and plough into the one flanking it. Even with shiny new weapons, Stanford supposed that their artificial intelligence hadn't changed much.

He winced, barely able to stop his head slamming into the controls from the force of being sideswiped by another zetner.

Agura precariously leaned over him and struggled to pull down a lever on his right. The ATV gave a jolt that nearly unseated him as the blades on the front began spiralling. Stanford rammed one of the sark trying to sandwich them in from the front. The back of its zetner erupted in sparks and then smoke as it peeled off from the chase. The remaining two were close on their heels, trying to sandwich them in from the sides and run them into a wall.

"There are too many on us at once - I'm going to draw their attention so you've got a chance to hit them!"

With that, Agura leapt off to the side, softening her drop with a roll into the dust before Stanford could scream about how reckless it was at her. Turning himself so that she was in his field of view, he could see one of the two remaining zetners heading towards her. His heart leapt up into his mouth. He hit one focusing on her from the side. The Vandalian frame of Agura's vehicle was heavier, meaning that when the zetner flipped onto its side, Stanford was still able to drive it up against a rock face, smashing through the cab and crumpling the robot at the controls into spare parts.

"Agura!"

She had barely jumped out of the way of the one remaining adversary for it to turn and power straight towards her. Sark were definitely less formidable when he and Agura had sentient chip-powered vehicles full of weapons to thin their numbers. But as long as they didn't pull another new trick on them, Stanford was confident that he and Agura could handle them.

Handle a small group at least. He didn't know how they would fare if the sentients sent a whole army of sark after them in retaliation.

He sped past Agura, slamming head-on into the zetner that was about to knock her down before it could reach her. Slowing it right down allowed Agura to catch up to them and jump on the zetner, kicking in the glass and dragging the robot out. By the time Stanford had managed to cut out the spluttering, struggling engine - Agura had driven her knife through its head, frying its circuits.

He slumped down in the seat with the loudest sigh he could muster. Agura mimicked his behaviour, collapsing on her back in the sand. "If that had been red sentients…" she trailed off, "we would have been dead."

He pushed that thought as far to the back of his mind as he could. The ATV had clearly seen better days. Overheated with the front bashed in, the engine was hissing and gushing steam.

"Sorry," he said sheepishly."

"Don't be-," she cut off his worries at the root. "But we're not out of the woods yet, Stanford. Leaving this planet without a vehicle would be a death sentence. We'll need to collect supplies and make repairs-."

"And hope that nothing else comes after us in the meantime, which is highly likely," Stanford finished for her. If there was any time to loathe that Agura was always correct, it would be now.

* * *

_**Thanks to my wonderful beta reader, Ashlyn for helping me get this chapter up to scratch. As well as scrawly_times/weregreatatcrime for the amazing feedback on the other chapters which has motivated me to keep going! The next few chapters are where the plot really kicks off and I'm pumped to start writing those. There are a few hints dropped about past and future events in this chapter, I wonder if you can find them. As always, I hope you enjoyed the chapter! And apologies for the extra delay because I always upload this to AO3 and forget to upload it to FFN for a month lol**_


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